


take the heart, leave the bone

by dygonilly



Series: outside of time [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Espionage, Everyone is In Love With Everyone, Immortals, Inspired by The Old Guard, M/M, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Polyamory, Sexual Content, Soulmates, Temporary Character Death, Xu Ming Hao | The8-centric, a story from the pov of a 1000 year old man with the metaphors to match, death threats as a love language, hints at dystopia, life and death and the things in between
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:28:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 32,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25718818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dygonilly/pseuds/dygonilly
Summary: “Dying is easy,” Junhui once told Soonyoung, when he was three decades deep into the shadows. “It is the living you have to grow accustomed to.”
Relationships: Kim Mingyu/Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi, Lee Seokmin | DK/Yoon Jeonghan, Wen Jun Hui | Jun/Xu Ming Hao | The8, Xu Ming Hao | The8/Everyone
Series: outside of time [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1865458
Comments: 46
Kudos: 164





	1. part one

**Author's Note:**

> I watched 'The Old Guard' and couldn't let go of the ideas it gave me. Two weeks and stupid amounts of research later, here we are. [Maya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/preciouslittletime) and I have built something I am really proud of, and this is the first part.
> 
> Please note, the violence and death tags are there for a reason, but nobody ever dies for real. Trust me.
> 
> Here is the [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1aJesheoDnb2j37yMZ9MgD?si=p5YvnoEqQw62y1DkVeVxog). the title is from 'End on a Hai' by Roland Faunte; the entire album is catered perfectly to this story and it hurts.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this. I love it very much.

____________________________________________________________________________

 _Minghao and Junhui  
_ _Prague, Czech Republic  
_ _May, 2026  
_ ____________________________________________________________________________

  
  


It’s a familiar sight: Junhui running someone through with a blade. 

Minghao has watched it happen thousands of times, in every imaginable way, yet it never feels any less thrilling. This time he has the guard pressed back against his chest, one hand over his mouth and the other driving a silver dagger in between the gaps of his vest, the matchstick line-up of his ribcage. It only takes a few seconds. Junhui understands how the human body works, and how it dies. 

For all the time they have, he doesn’t enjoy wasting any if he can help it. 

They leave the guard slumped against the very door he was being paid to protect. He looks like he’s sleeping. Once upon a time Minghao might have wondered if this man had a family waiting for him, what kind of ripples their actions would cause. Now, he steps over the body and doesn’t look back.

The alleys snaking around the perimeter of the Old Town square are dark and mostly deserted but their footfall is light on the cobblestones. They stick to the walls. Minghao goes first. Junhui clings to him like a shadow, touches his elbow when they reach a corner: a well-worn signal to pause and hold your breath. 

Two guards move into the moonlight. The shorter one says something in a tired voice. “You got any more?” Junhui translates into his ear, close and quiet enough to be brushed off as a whistle on the wind. The other guard responds and Junhui says: “Fuck off, I brought it for myself.” 

They start bickering and Junhui taps Minghao’s shoulder twice: _your turn_.

The sound of his swords sliding against each other as Minghao pulls them out the holster and over his shoulders is like silk and string instruments. They are an extension of him—light and familiar in the way they cut through the air and catch an errant slice of the moon. Minghao is more careful with these blades than he is with his own body. Where Junhui cycles through weapons like a child growing bored of his toys, Minghao hardly even lets these out of his sight. _It’s an obsession_ , Junhui said once, kissing the angle of his shoulder blade, _perhaps the only way to kill you would be to pry them from your hands_. Minghao had smirked into the pillow and said, _If that’s the case then I truly will live forever._

The guards die like two birds run through with a single bullet. 

They keep moving.

Within minutes they arrive at the riverbank. The water is almost black, and it churns, bolstered by morning rainfall that also lingers in potholes on the road. A civilian car passes them with its high beams on, and Junhui moves to protect them both from the drivers’ sight.

“How much further?” Minghao asks his collarbone. He smells like copper.

“Three minutes North. Two once we breach.” Junhui pulls a gun fitted with a black silencer from the holster over his ribs and Minghao scoffs. “We can’t all be traditionalists like you, _bǎobèi_.”

“Maybe then we wouldn’t be in our third war of the century,” mutters Minghao, and it pulls a sweet grin across Junhui’s mouth before he drops gracefully back into the fighting mindset. He jerks his chin and Minghao follows him down a staircase to walk alongside the water itself since this bridge is no longer an option.

 _Karlův most_ is a mess of rubble. Bricks protrude from the river like compound fractures. Minghao forgets which war finally tore it down.

Many cities look like this, now. Landmarks torn apart and left gutted like roadkill. It was tragic at first—the loss of history. Minghao privately mourned trivial things like archways and stone bridges when he passed by their skeletons, for in a way they were placeholders for the lifetimes he can no longer remember without concentrating or asking Junhui. In another way, none of it matters. Minghao tries not to dwell where he can.

History often feels like a human luxury. To know of its existence yet to choose only to look forward, to willfully destroy it in pursuit of an unknown future, is a special kind of greed. Armed rebel groups like those attempting to occupy this city like choking vines are the worst offenders. Though they were not responsible for the fall of the bridge that Junhui hardly gives a second glance, they are causing their own kind of carnage. 

Truthfully, Minghao was happy to let the fires burn on horizon, but Junhui has been restless lately—digging into news articles and names and disappearing at sundown only to return to their small apartment at dawn with a grin and two daggers that needed cleaning. 

He gets like this every few years. Itchy. Static. Paranoid that they are not doing enough. Scared that times will change without him. Minghao doesn’t mind the standing still, letting the years wash past like a stream. Immortality, for all its curses, gifted him with a slow and patient temperament. Junhui was not so lucky.

They scale a steep incline of mud and grass to return to ground level. Junhui is faster; he holds a hand out to pull Minghao up the rest of the way and grins when Minghao slaps it out of the way and pulls himself over the top. 

The remains of a brick wall provides them with cover as they crouch together, breathing shallow. Two metres away stands a tall wooden gate reinforced with steel. This used to be a museum. Now it is a weapons base for one of the many self-made rebel groups this side of the continent trying out occupation like a young boy pulling on his father’s suit. Ill-fitting. Messy. A pain in Minghao’s side.

He didn’t ask Junhui what they call themselves. It doesn’t matter. They all bleed the same.

 _I’ll take the towers,_ Junhui signs, leather gloves rustling _. Go for the ground patrol_.

Minghao nods his understanding. He leans over and kisses Junhui’s temple, then his mouth, and then his swords are sliding over his head and between their bodies once more. Junhui leans in and kisses the flat of the blade closest to him, eyes locked with Minghao’s as he does. Minghao burns with it from the inside out. The way his lips flare against the metal, the way they drag down. 

The sharp edge catches his lip, though he barely startles as blood flares from the cut like a rose; in the time it takes for his tongue to swipe over it, the wound has already healed.

Junhui clicks the safety off his gun. His grin is electric and tinged pink. Minghao counts two long exhales before following him out into the open, going right where he goes left. 

The first sign that something is wrong is the lack of guards at the gate. 

Normally Minghao would brush it off as inexperience on their part, but they have people stationed all throughout the city—this kind of oversight rings out like discordant bells. He keeps his weapons poised as he moves, crouched, to plaster his back against the old wood of the gates. One of them creaks inwards, unbarred: the second sign. 

The courtyard lights are still on. Minghao catches Junhui’s shadow moving along the terracotta tiles of the roof, towards the watchtower at the far side. Everything else is still. 

He nudges the gate open just enough to slip through the gap and looks around. There are two statues in the middle of the square, facing each other; both of their heads have been removed, a yellow insignia spray-painted across their metal chests. A comms radio is screaming somewhere, breaking in and out of signal, the voice frantic and unintelligible. 

And then, the third sign.

Minghao freezes at the sight of the bodies: one face down, bleeding rivers between the cobblestones and two slumped in chairs, eyes unseeing, a bullethole neatly settled between their eyes. Someone got here before them. The next set of doors is open, leading into a sterile looking foyer. There are no lights on inside.

The radio making all the noise is clipped to the third man’s belt and Minghao moves closer so he can slice it in half and bask in the quiet, but it suddenly snaps back into signal. Though his Czech was better two centuries ago, he knows enough to pick up the words breached, back-up, and the unmistakable sound of a throat being cut. He instantly straightens up with one blade held horizontally before his chest like a barrier between himself and the gaping darkness. 

When Junhui lands on his feet like a cat behind him, dropped from the rooftop, he doesn’t turn around. “What did you find?” 

“Dead bodies.” Junhui sounds disappointed. They pass through the foyer and into a moonlit room with an exposed ceiling and boxes of weapons lying along the walls in careless rows. Bodies litter the concrete like shrapnel. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” Junhui says. “Nobody else had this place marked.” One of the bodies groans and he deposits a bullet in their skull without even looking down. “All the other insurgent groups were driven out in March and their closest enemy base is in Budapest.”

“Maybe they got bored,” says Minghao, looking pointedly at Junhui. They both pause at a man lying on his back, arms and legs spread out like a bloody snow angel. The wound along his throat is perfectly straight and needle-thin. Impressive. Minghao nudges his cheek with the tip of his sword, looks at the other bodies and frowns. “This is too clean.”

Junhui hums. “Tower guards were all taken out by a sniper.” He taps his forehead. “Right between the eyes.”

The thought crosses Minghao’s mind just as a smile blooms across Junhui’s dangerous mouth. He excitedly retraces his steps to the entrance of the room and studies the pattern of the bodies with new eyes. He moves through the room like he’s following someone else’s steps in the sand: two men in one sweep, duck down, spin, disarm, another one down. This man has a bullet through his head—Minghao looks left and, yes, there’s a splinter in the window, glass cracking around it like a spiderweb—the next has a broken nose and a clean line over his throat. One step to the right, use the wall to spring off in a kick that would take the last man down and, “Break his neck,” whispers Minghao.

Junhui, having been following his actions with eyes like a hawk, meets his bright gaze with slack jawed excitement. He crouches down and yanks Minghao forward by the shirt to kiss him open mouthed and fast. Minghao leans into it, blood singing. “You think they’re still here?” he pants when they pull apart. 

“There’s an entire warehouse behind this building,” says Junhui. “They’ve been running comms from a room on the second floor.”

“No loose ends,” Minghao recites, and then they’re off, running at a sprint through the rest of the repurposed, vandalised museum, following the bodies like breadcrumbs until they find an emergency exit door that spits them back out into the night. 

The windows of the warehouse are already flashing with gunfire when they approach—sharp solar flares clawing at the rusted window panes, leaking out around broken glass and fighting against the moonlight. Minghao hates the sound of automatic weapons. They are a lazy choice; a bloody side effect of modernity. Ten bullets in two seconds. Efficient, yes, but completely unrefined. They also feel like shit to spit back out.

Junhui waltzes in through the side door like it’s a vacation home. This is Minghao’s favourite part. So much has changed over the years but this, like so many things about Junhui, has remained constant. 

His chin tilts up by two degrees, his feet shift, his shoulders and his brow set in tandem. Every angle of his body is perfect, as though they were moulded by Pythagoras himself. His gun settles back into its holster and out comes his daggers—one in each gloved hand. 

At its very core, fighting is like dancing—all footwork and body lines and anticipation— and Wen Junhui moves like there is an eight-count in the staccato of enemy artillery.

Two men go down like dominoes. The third fights back. Minghao passes behind to sweep a sword across the back of his knees, allowing Junhui to snap his neck. Another pair goes down cleanly, passed back and forth between them like a ragdoll, left limp and bleeding on the concrete. 

Most of the gunfire seems to be contained to the upper level, but Minghao still gets clipped in the shoulder as he’s pulling a sword from someone’s mid-section. He spins around to find a woman ducking behind some crates. He runs, uses one hand to swing himself up onto the closest one and absorbs another shot in his stomach before dropping onto her shoulders and driving both blades into her body on either side of her neck. He lands lightly on his feet and cleans the blood off on her sleeve. 

The bullets leave a terrible taste in his mouth; he spits them out like seeds.

“Clear,” Junhui calls out, reappearing from behind an armoured truck, his hair falling into his eyes. His gaze instantly drops to the sticky residue of blood along Minghao’s abdomen, but there is no need to worry, so Minghao doesn’t waste time with reassurances.

The second level is a graveyard of computers and live wires. Amongst it all, two men fight with their fists and their knees, movements blurring under the flickering lights. The taller one is all defense and brute force and the other—

Minghao could paint him with his eyes closed. 

There’s a studio gathering dust in Nantes that, if you were to pull the heavy sheets aside, would reveal a hundred iterations of the slope of his nose and the summer-moon-crescents of his eyes when he smiles. How his fingers pull tangerines apart and how the juice drips down his chin and the column of his throat when he bites down.

Lee Seokmin moves the way he was taught: quickly and violently. 

While his opponent is recovering from a hit to his solar plexus, he pulls a knife from the holster around his thigh. It sings in his fingers, dances like the needle of a compass. His hand doesn’t shift a single degree as he runs the blade along the man’s throat. Precise. Impressive. Just as he was taught.

It’s been two years since Minghao and Junhui have seen him, but when Seokmin turns around and smiles, the time melts between them like syrup. It always does. He vaults over the sputtering mess of a computer and barrels into them, one arm around Minghao’s waist and another around Junhui’s. 

“Sword,” Minghao yelps, arm trapped. Seokmin leaps back sheepishly. For all his learned grace he is often still too eager in his movements. 

Junhui tucks his own daggers away and whisks Seokmin up into a hug, burying his face in his neck and rocking them side to side, mumbling _hello’s_ and _I missed you’s_ into his skin. 

Something ancient and heavy falls back into place inside Minghao’s chest as he watches them. The weight of separation eases, pulls a finger off his pulse point, and when Junhui finally releases Seokmin he dives forward into the familiar embrace himself. It’s a little clumsy with their gear pressed between them, but Seokmin’s hands are warm and steady on the small of his back.

“How are you?” asks Minghao. He pulls back and cradles Seokmin’s face between his hands, turns his head side to side with a thumb on his jaw. Seokmin allows the fussing for a few seconds before pulling away with rosy cheeks.

“I’m good. Better than last year,” he adds dryly.

“What happened?” 

Seokmin exhales sharply. “We spent six months tracking a new cartel down through Panama before our inside guy got spooked. Led us to an ‘empty’ storage unit in La Palma which wasn’t so empty after all.” He shrugs and runs his fingers through his hair. It’s a dirty chestnut colour; last time they were all together it was maroon. “Long story short, we got blasted to pieces. Turns out grenades are fun to throw but catching them is not such a great idea.”

“Who knew,” Junhui deadpans.

“Right? Anyway. We woke up in a holding cell on the other side of the border and it took almost a month to get out because they all knew about the—” Seokmin motions towards his torso. “So they wouldn’t leave us alone. We figured it out eventually, though. Made some friends. Hyung wouldn’t stop complaining about his skin for weeks afterwards.”

“An entire month in prison?” Minghao laughs, eyebrows high. “He’s lost his touch.” 

As soon as he says it, the glaring red of a laser assaults his left eye, then his right, before settling dead between them.

Seokmin smirks. “Don’t think he liked that.”

Junhui silently holds a hand up in offering and the red dot jumps off Minghao’s forehead and into his palm like a curious bird. It traces a perfect heart and then blinks off completely—an invitation that Junhui accepts with a sharp grin. He clasps his hands loosely behind his back and cranes his neck, eyes tracking the metal panels along the ceiling, the walls, the windows. He takes three measured steps backwards and stops. “Got it,” he says.

Seokmin presses a finger to his inner-ear. “He wants proof.”

Junhui rolls his eyes but he takes his gun out, aims it at one of the panels, and shoots. The bullet pierces clean through the metal and a voice cries out. Minghao cranes his neck to watch as Jeonghan’s face appears in the empty space where a panel used to be, a few degrees to the left of Junhui’s target.

“You shot me in the arm!” he yells.

“You wanted proof!” Junhui yells back.

“Asshole.” A thin line of grappling rope drops down through the hole in the ceiling and coils on the floor a few feet away. Jeonghan sails down to meet them, one hand on the rope and a jet-black sniper dangling from the other. He lands in a delicate crouch and straightens up lazily, jaw working on some chewing gum. “You’re getting better at that,” he tells Junhui.

Junhui shrugs. “Perhaps you’re just becoming predictable.”

Jeonghan blows a bubble that pops obnoxiously in the silence. “Hm,” is all he says. His eyes jump over to Minghao. They scan him like an x-ray and zero in on his shoulder, widening with some kind of delight. He uses the end of his gun to nudge the sticky sleeve of Minghao’s shirt. “Getting sloppy, old man,” he tuts. 

Minghao knocks the barrel away with his hand. “How was Colombia?” he asks sweetly.

“Humid,” Jeonghan says flatly. “How long have you two been in Prague?”

“Eight months tomorrow,” Junhui says. By their standards, it’s a brief visit, but Minghao has little desire to stick around anymore. The barren winter landscape lingers even as they move towards the summer, an unforgiving coldness lingering amongst the people and the battered buildings. It’s understandable for a country sliding back into a war borne from issues that could have been avoided years ago, if only the government actually cared about their people.

“Why are _you_ here?” Minghao asks. “I seem to remember you likening Eastern Europe to—what was it— _a flaming pile of shit surrounded by concrete_?”

Jeonghan waves him off. “Eh, that was the 80s. They’ve learned a bit about design and individualism since then.”

“And the finding and killing twenty-three people?”

“Oh, you know,” Jeonghan crouches down beside one of the bodies, “thought their uniforms were ugly. Felt like they could have managed themselves better.” He picks up one of the stray machine guns and stands up. “The two hundred women they trafficked in the past month.” He empties the cartridge into the body and Minghao grimaces, averting his eyes skywards. Naturally he has a similar distaste for people like this, which is why he had no issue running them through with swords. 

However, where he holds his grudges at arm’s length, Jeonghan swallows them whole. 

It’s something Minghao thought would dull over time. So many things do. And it has, in a way, but it has little to do with Jeonghan finally learning some self control and everything to do with the gentle way Seokmin touches his arm in the ringing silence that follows.

Minghao watches Jeonghan’s side profile melt from marble to clay, expression flickering like a television changing channels until he settles on something akin to apathy. He flings the empty gun aside. “Let’s get out of here, it fucking stinks,” he says, spitting out his chewing gum.

  
  
  
  
  


They wander through the shadows cast by the corpse of St. Thomas church like a macabre group of tourists. Junhui plays the guide, spouting facts unprompted. He says he knew the man who designed it; Jeonghan points out that he says that every time they walk past a church, and it stopped sounding believable in 1825. 

As they squabble up ahead, Seokmin falls into step with Minghao. “Have either of you heard from Mingyu recently?” he asks.

Minghao stops walking. “Why?”

“Why do you think?” drawls Jeonghan, butting into the conversation. He deepens his voice in an eerily accurate mimicry, words and consonants running together: “Soonyoungie ran away again! I have no purpose without him! If I weren’t immortal I would die from this broken heart.” He swoons back into Junhui’s arms and everyone giggles at the act, except for Minghao.

“Jealousy is extremely unbecoming,” he says, a little venomously. Silence smothers them like a landslide. 

Jeonghan smoothly extricates himself from Junhui’s arms. Outwardly he looks calm, playful, mouth tipped up at one corner, but knowing someone for six hundred years will turn them into a glass lake: no matter how they try to disturb the waters, the jagged mess along the floor remains visible. 

Every part of himself that Yoon Jeonghan has tried to kill, run through and pulled apart, lies in bleeding heaps for Minghao to see. To remember. To read in the carefully crafted angle between his smile and the twitch in his brow. 

They cannot hide from each other, though they try. 

Minghao believes that Soonyoung’s affinity for running away as soon as things get difficult is cowardly. Soonyoung knows that. 

He also envies it. 

Soonyoung knows that, too.

____________________________________________________________________________

 _Minghao and Soonyoung  
_ _Masan, Korea  
_ _April, 1947  
_ ____________________________________________________________________________

  
  


“Personally I would have chosen something a little further from the port.” Minghao leans out of one of the windows, resting his palms on the wooden sill. He speaks over his shoulder, raises his voice to be heard. “Do your clothes not all smell like fish scales and salt?” 

Soonyoung’s laugh cascades through the small apartment, the sweet sound mixing with the gulls crying along the wind, the shouts from the docks. He appears with a delicate cup of tea in each hand. “I’m used to it,” he says, placing them on the circular table beside the window. He doesn’t use a coaster; Minghao holds his tongue.

“How does it feel to be back?” he asks, leaning a shoulder against the wall. Soonyoung takes a seat in one of the brightly-upholstered dining chairs, facing both Minghao and the view. 

“The same way it always does, I suppose,” says Soonyoung. “Like I’ve been dropped in another man’s interpretation of Masan.” He grins. “The mountains haven’t moved, though.”

Minghao rolls his eyes. “Very astute.” 

Soonyoung winks at him. He is always so at ease here. It is where he spent his first lifetime, and where it ended—caught in a fishing accident somewhere along the very same horizon Minghao is currently regarding, more than three centuries later.

In many ways Soonyoung emulates Masan; he surges and swells like the ocean, movements imbued with a fluid sort of chaos; he reigns himself in, steadies his expressions like the rolling mountains scattered around the bay. Minghao sees him in the grit along the port. The wind that slides down through the trees, the children playing along the bathing beach, the hardened perseverance of the people.

But him being here always means the same thing.

“Nobody has heard from you since New York,” Minghao says. 

Soonyoung sharpens in response; a blade turned two degrees to the left. This conversation always feels the way Minghao imagines scolding a teenager might. He hates it every time, but if nobody pulls Soonyoung back by the scruff of his neck, he will disappear for a lot longer than three years. 

“Perhaps my letters got lost in the mail.” Soonyoung kicks his feet up onto the table and crosses his hands behind his head, leaning his chair on its back legs with a smug grin. “The entire world has been at war, after all. Tends to cause a delay.”

“You mean the letters you sent from the middle of the Pacific? No. They never came.” 

Soonyoung wobbles a little in his chair, a side-effect of surprise that would be imperceptible if Minghao didn’t have a bone deep awareness of everything about him. “I thought you said the dreams stopped,” he says. “Years ago.”

“They did. But you died five times in three months.”

“Eight,” Soonyoung quietly corrects.

Minghao closes his eyes, feeling the ghost of each of Soonyoung’s deaths like a phantom pain in his gut, his chest, his temple. He remembers the taste of salt water and soil and metal that had struck through him like lightning—had him writhing in bed, gasping into Junhui’s shoulder, clinging to the material of Mingyu’s shirt, knees buckling in the middle of a sentence.

There is a terrible physicality to the deaths that don’t belong to him. He remembers them more than his own. 

The legs of Soonyoung’s chair scrape along the floor. His palm is soft where it comes to rest on Minghao’s cheek. “I’m so sorry, Minghao,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean for you to… to put you through that. I didn’t think.”

Minghao opens his eyes and stares into Soonyoung’s, the molton brown of them, the forest fire of history burning behind them. “You did think, Soonyoung. Just not of yourself.”

Soonyoung looks away. Looks to the city he always runs back to, out of fear or nostalgia or a burning grief he might never let go of, no matter how Minghao and the others counsel him to. 

Minghao has been alive long enough to see that what everyone thinks is just Soonyoung being Soonyoung is actually him raging against his circumstances. 

They all carry the burden of eternity differently. 

Minghao sits atop it like a throne, cold and unforgiving. Junhui wears it like a crown. Mingyu buries it, builds homes on top of it, leaves the roots to grow. Seokmin is still young enough that he holds it up to the light to watch how it refracts. Jeonghan keeps it crushed beneath his heel. Pinned down by the throat.

Soonyoung carries the weight of his immortality with bare hands and shaking knees. 

Minghao has watched his strength give out too many times to count. Sometimes he stays down for months, years, but he always gets up. _Again_ , he says. _Let’s go again_. And so they do. Together or not at all.

“Dying is easy,” Junhui once told Soonyoung, when he was three decades deep into the shadows. “It is the living you have to grow accustomed to.”

A cool breeze dances through the window and waltzes between them, picks up the black edges of Soonyoung’s hair and paints them pretty across his brow. Minghao watches him watch his city and feels the smoke of envy in his belly; the place he was born no longer exists as tangibly as Masan does. He cannot remember what it looked like, if it smelled strong enough to cling to your clothes, if it rained in the evenings or the wind ever pulled things apart like a greedy child. It no longer bothers him as strongly as it once did—more of a passing twinge than a smothering hurt—for Minghao’s true home has no walls, nor a garden. It exists in the bodies of five other people, and in his own. 

“Look at me,” Minghao breathes, and Soonyoung comes back to him in pieces: first his breath, then his eyes, then his body. It is the same when he dies and when he needs forgiveness, as though the very act of coming back to life is somehow comparable to an apology. 

He has to tilt his chin just so to keep their gazes together when they are standing this close, and it makes Minghao smile; Soonyoung’s nose wrinkles. “We worry because we love you,” Minghao says in Mandarin, stroking gentle fingers down Soonyoung’s cheek. “And we forgive you for the same reason. What you did was reckless—” Soonyoung twitches as if to move away and Minghao holds him still, fingers at his jaw “—but it was brave, and I believe your actions allowed many men to go home to their families. You are a good man, Kwon Soonyoung. If I must repeat myself for another three centuries so that you may one day believe it too, then so be it.”

Soonyoung crumples into him like a stack of cards, pulling his arms tight around his waist and burying his face in his neck. Minghao wraps gentle arms around his shoulders and holds his head close, kisses his temple as Soonyoung cries quietly into the collar of his shirt. They sway together amongst the sea breeze and the silence for long enough that their tea grows cold. 

A knock at the door pulls them apart. 

“Soonyoung? Yah, you need to lock your door! You never know who could just walk… in…” A young man appears in the doorway, black hair wild from the wind. He’s beautiful. Straight nose, heavy eyebrows, pale skin. His clothes are more American in their fashion—a baby blue sweater vest tucked into perfectly pressed cream slacks. He looks rather petrified, as though he’s been caught doing something he’s not supposed to.

He dips into a bow, directed at Minghao. “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t know you had company.” He has to push his glasses back up his nose when he straightens. He still looks like a scared mouse, so Minghao makes an effort to relax his expression. 

Soonyoung beams. “It’s okay, Wonwoo,” he says, and Minghao instantly knows who he is to Soonyoung just by the way the syllables curl around his tongue. “This is an old friend of mine, Xu Minghao.”

“Jeon Wonwoo.” Wonwoo bows again. “Are you in Masan for long?”

“Just passing through,” says Minghao, looking between them with a small grin. Soonyoung widens his eyes minutely at him. _Stop it_ , it says, so Minghao tamps down his smirk.

Soonyoung turns back to Wonwoo. “I thought we said four o’clock? Did I get it wrong again?”

“No, no, we did. I was just… well I was taking a walk and I thought I would pass by. I can come back later?” Wonwoo offers.

“No need,” Minghao says, moving to gather his suit jacket from the back of the chair. “I need to go down to the markets, maybe pass by the post office.” He doesn’t really, and Soonyoung knows that. He shoots Minghao a grateful look as he pulls his arms into his jacket. “Will you see me out, Soonyoung? I might need you to point out the correct street. It was lovely to meet you, Wonwoo-ssi.”

“Likewise,” Wonwoo says a little dazedly. 

Minghao switches to Portugese once they are outside. Mandarin is too risky; Wonwoo looks upper class. Educated. “How long?” he asks.

“Oh not this, Minghao,” Soonyoung groans.

“Does he know?”

“Which part?”

“That if I threw you down the stairs you would get back up again.”

Soonyoung takes a cautious step away from him. “No. And we’ve only known each other a year.”

“He loves you already.”

“No he doesn’t,” scoffs Soonyoung. “I’m just new and exciting. A chance for the mayor’s son to have a forbidden romance before he’s married off to some rich woman’s daughter.” Minghao flicks Soonyoung’s ear and he yelps. “What was that for?”

“Have some respect. For him and for yourself.” 

Soonyoung does this more often than the others, more than even Jeonghan—leaves a wake of infatuated mortals behind him like breadcrumbs, so unaware of his effect on people even after all these years. Well. He is aware of his effect on one person, though he chooses to ignore that with the same steadfastness he takes into battle. 

A train rumbles to life at the station down by the water, pushing noise and smoke tendrils into the air. 

“Be kind to him when you leave,” Minghao says softly. “He will remember you for the rest of his life.”

“I know,” Soonyoung says. It is heavy and final: a gong reverberating in the space between them, giving way to the whistle of the train as it sets off on its journey.

____________________________________________________________________________

 _The Westin Palace Hotel  
_ _Madrid, Spain  
_ _May, 2026  
_ ____________________________________________________________________________

  
  


Waiters flutter past like hummingbirds, rich people sip tea on the terrace outside and laugh loud enough to clash with the sound of the fountains and the music. The unrest of the East hasn’t reached this city, yet. It bleeds slowly through the rest of the continent. It is only a matter of time. Many things are.

An Italian woman greets them at the door and Minghao drops Mingyu’s name like a strawberry in champagne. She smiles with blood-red lips and guides them to a circular table by the window. At a single click of her fingers, the surrounding tables are cleared and a waiter brings them menus and a fresh bottle of _Teso La Monja_. 

“Let me know if you need anything,” she says. Minghao bows his head. _Questo è tutto._ That’ll be all.

“God, he couldn’t showboat more if he tried,” Jeonghan laughs, watching her walk away in her Prada pumps. “He’s probably got permanent lipstick stains on his dick.”

“Are you offering to get them off?”

Kim Mingyu smells like Bleu de Chanel and looks like the very definition of class where he leans against the gilded walls of a hotel he helped pay for. He’s wearing a white shirt with too many buttons undone beneath his suit jacket and the golden skin of his chest sticks out like an invitation. Minghao knows that everything on him is tailor made, because he taught him not to settle.

Seokmin stands to greet him first, a smile overtaking his face. They hug each other like it’s a competition to see who can squeeze harder.

Mingyu passes Junhui next, claps him on the shoulder and kisses his cheek. “Did you find it okay?” He undoes the button on his jacket and takes the seat between Minghao and Jeonghan.

“Did we find the hotel with the ten foot sign and its own roundabout?” Seokmin asks. “Yes.” Mingyu scrunches his nose at him. They act like children together; comparatively, they are.

Mingyu finally turns to Minghao and slings an arm over his shoulders, pulls him close, presses his mouth against his hair. “ _Hola_ ,” he says softly, shuffling their chairs together so that Minghao can fully lean into his side. Junhui watches them adoringly.

“You look well,” Minghao says, stomach bubbling like champagne. They have kept up loose correspondence over the past year, but Minghao still missed him keenly, as he always does. 

Mingyu beams and kisses the shell of his ear. “Always,” he says. “Much better now, though.”

“I see you’re still profiting off corruption,” Jeonghan remarks, petulant at being the last to receive attention.

“Learned from the best,” Mingyu quips. He takes Jeonghan’s hand in his, kisses his knuckles with a flair leftover from his first lifetime as an upper class boy with perfect manners and a ramrod spine. Jeonghan rolls his eyes and shoves Mingyu’s face away, but Minghao knows how much he loves it. Jeonghan likes to bully Mingyu as much as he likes to get fucked by him. That is to say: loudly, and as often as possible.

But that’s not why they’re in Spain, although Minghao sort of wishes it were.

Over red wine and appetisers, Mingyu recounts the past month of intermittent communication with Soonyoung that cut off the same day Mingyu almost passed out from a migraine. 

“And he didn’t share coordinates, names, anything?” asks Junhui.

Mingyu finishes his wine and shakes his head tersely. “South Africa. That’s all I know.”

“I’ll pull some favours,” says Minghao. 

“Do you need me to kill him?” Jeonghan asks him, twirling a butter knife in his fingers. “Activate one of your little juju dreams?”

“That will not be necessary.”

“Just a quick one.”

“No, Jeonghan.”

Jeonghan puts the knife down with a pout. 

Mingyu feels like a livewire along Minghao’s side, heart beating hard and fast against his thousand-dollar shirt, fingers fussing with his wine glass. Minghao waits until the others are caught up in a conversation about suppliers and flight paths before he folds his hand over Mingyu’s thigh and squeezes gently. Mingyu’s legs fall open at the touch, a subconscious response to Minghao’s fingers on his body, and Minghao huffs a laugh through his nose.

“What?” Mingyu asks, right into his ear. Minghao turns his face; their noses brush; Mingyu’s eyes drop down like magnets to watch Minghao’s lips move when he speaks.

“How long have you been in Madrid?” 

He’s asking a different question in the spaces between his words: _how long have you been waiting for him to come back?_ Mingyu leans his head back and sighs quietly at the ceiling. Across the table, Seokmin laughs, squeaking and loud, and Jeonghan follows in harmony. 

“Two years,” says Mingyu. “He hasn’t been in any danger until now. I think he was just… he does this, you know? He needs the space and the idea of something permanent makes him all itchy like—”

“You do not have to explain Kwon Soonyoung’s bad habits to me,” Minghao cuts him off with a sad smile and another comforting press of his fingers. Mingyu laughs through his nose.

“I don’t think I could even if I tried.”

____________________________________________________________________________

 _Minghao, Junhui and Mingyu  
_ _Cádiz, Spain  
_ _1863-1867  
_ ____________________________________________________________________________

They live simply, in an El Mentidero apartment with a blue facade and hand painted tiles. Their bedroom window overlooks the plaza. Minghao purchased the building in 1811, when the paint was still fresh enough to smell and the gaps now filled by fountains and people taking a sunset drink were flat with the promise of a future city. 

Much like the days in Spain, the progress is slow, but it is careful and beautiful, and these days Minghao enjoys nothing more than taking quiet strolls through the narrow streets, admiring the flowers and voices and music tumbling from the balconies. Seeing what has changed. What has remained.

He was in Càdiz for almost a full decade with Junhui before Mingyu appeared on their doorstep with short hair and a sideways smile, mouth clumsy around his Spanish but perfect in its Italian. It only took another four months before he burst into the parlour with papers for a plot of land just beyond the reaches of Catedral Neuva’s afternoon shadow, overlooking the ocean.

“What’s this?” Minghao had asked, putting down his tea and picking up the papers. 

“I’m going to build us a home,” Mingyu gushed, hardly able to stand still for how excited he was.

Junhui peeled himself from the chaise beside the window and draped himself over Mingyu’s back, swaying them side to side. “We already have a home,” he pointed out.

“This will be different,” Mingyu said, hands flying, eyes brighter than Minghao had ever seen. “It will be ours. I will make it perfect.”

And he does.

In the mornings he eats with the vigour of a man going to war, and then he bursts out of the front door with a goodbye thrown over his shoulder, only to come back at sunset with sweat-stained clothes and a satisfied smile to pair with the exhaustion around his eyes.

It takes him one year. He tells them nothing of what it looks like and makes them promise they will not walk by it to spoil the surprise. Junhui doesn’t like being told not to do things, but he can never say no to Mingyu. 

It’s torture, but it’s worth it for the way Mingyu guides them along Campo Del Sur in the late morning with stars in his eyes and roses in his hands, walking so quickly in his excitement that he has to consciously slow down three times before Minghao laughs and links their pinky fingers together.

The house faces the ocean; it will catch the sunset and bask in it like a cat. Built in the style of the time, its bricks are lathered white, and there is a balcony jutting out of each window on the second floor. All of the detailing is pale yellow and beautiful; geraniums spill from the window boxes like rubies. 

Minghao walks through it, quiet like a man in church. “Oh Mingyu,” he sighs. “It’s perfect.” 

“You think so?” Mingyu asks. Evidence of his love and care drips from the walls like melting snow, yet he still looks unsure. Always seeking confirmation. Affirmation. Praise. So Minghao drifts forward like a breeze and hugs him, kisses his blushing cheek and hangs off his arm as he tells him every little thing he loves about it, and when the noon-bells start to ring in the cathedral, Junhui calls out from the balcony, delighted. 

  
  
  
  
  


The months go by. The house becomes a home, and Junhui grows impatient. 

“You know the rules,” Minghao whispers against his mouth, one hand in his hair and the other in the sheets around his head. “He has to come to us.”

Junhui whines. “But it’s been so long.” He gasps when Minghao’s hips meet the back of his thighs with a little extra force; his back arches prettily and Minghao moves a hand between him and the mattress to pull their bodies closer together. “I want—“

“What,” Minghao pushes, “do you want him here? Inside of you like this?” He speeds up, breaths coming in sharper. He controls his impatience better than Junhui, hides his desire, but it is there, and it burns. 

“Yes,” chants Junhui, “yes, yes, yes.”

And usually Minghao would press his mouth over Junhui’s to swallow his shout when he comes, but he is growing impatient, too. 

They both appreciate beautiful things, and over their time together they have brought many others into their relationship—usually only for a night or a few. Nothing serious enough to leave a mark. Junhui falls in love too easily, but he forgets just as fast. 

It is different with the others. 

Minghao still remembers the way his first kiss with Jeonghan drew blood—a desperate sort of comfort that came from feeling alone and overwhelmed, somewhere at the beginning. Though Jeonghan still loves them like it’s a challenge, he softens when he chooses to, and that is how Minghao likes him best. 

Soonyoung loves and he leaves, and Minghao feels like a hurricane has torn through him every time. He often wonders how Mingyu is still standing, but then he also knows how Mingyu loves: steady and strong and overflowing. 

He is gentle and almost shy, until he is not. Caravaggio’s most divine works cannot hold a candle to Mingyu with half lidded eyes and a heaving chest. Mingyu in the heat of the moment is like marble in motion; every shift of his muscles and curl of his tongue is worthy of the tallest pedestal in a museum, and Minghao has been regarding him from a polite distance for months, touching him safely and softly, but now—

Minghao _wants_. 

They grow bolder in the ways they touch each other around Mingyu over the next few weeks. Leaving the door open. Kissing against the hand-painted tiles in the foyer. Shirts untucked. Mouths swollen. Mingyu watches them with dark eyes and flushed cheeks, but every night he goes back to his own bedroom on the first floor.

Until.

Minghao and Junhui have spent the afternoon at Playa de La Caleta, lounging in the sand and listening to the ocean. Mingyu said he had things to do—he would see them later. 

Minghao didn’t anticipate that later would entail walking through the front door and instantly being swept into Mingyu’s arms and dipped backwards into a kiss so forceful he had to cling to his biceps over his sleeves to keep himself steady.

Mingyu lets him up after several long seconds and breathes harshly into his mouth. Minghao feels completely disorientated, hat tipped sideways, lips burning. “Good afternoon to you too,” he breathes, giggling out of shock. 

“Sorry,” says Mingyu, throat clicking with a swallow. “I just—I couldn’t wait any longer.”

“Oh, finally!” Junhui cries. He flings his hat off and leaps into Mingyu’s arms to kiss him through a smile.

  
  
  
  
  


Summer fades to fall and back again. Touch comes easier and more often. Minghao feels lighter and younger with Mingyu around, always has, and it feels like a privilege to watch him take Junhui apart in their sheets, to touch and be touched by both of them, held down by the throat and drawn back with a kiss. 

They make harbours of each other's bodies. Mingyu cries when he feels overwhelmed and Minghao links their fingers together when he moves inside of him, palms clasped together above their heads. He presses promises along Mingyu’s collarbones and fucks them into his mouth.

They will forget this, eventually. Everything fades, no matter how desperately they cling, no matter how many sketches Minghao frantically scratches into his journals, how many songs Junhui threads through his instruments. 

Their bodies are so much cheaper than their minds but Minghao still holds Mingyu like he is breakable and he presses all three of them together in the hopes that this, if nothing else, not the marks on their skin nor the fluttering of their pulses, will linger. 

Life feels untouchable for a long time. They keep normal jobs and they leave their weapons under the bed. Junhui brings home baskets of oranges and peels them with his thumbs and his teeth, feeds the pieces to Mingyu and chases the juice with his mouth. They have sex on the kitchen floor and the windows are open and the ocean is glittering and everything is perfect. 

But if Minghao has learned anything from living as long as they have, it is that nothing lasts. 

On the eve of their fourth winter together, he dreams of Soonyoung dying in the murky streets of London and he wakes up to find Mingyu sitting on the edge of the mattress, his head hanging between his shoulders. There is a bag packed at his feet already. 

The illusion of their little life by the ocean splinters, and for a moment Minghao feels irrevocably sad, that this was always meant to be temporary, as everything in their lives has to be.

“He needs me,” Mingyu says. One hundred years condensed into a single breath.

He is gone by the end of the day, leaving behind only lingering kisses on their temples and the home he built for them.

Junhui acts like it doesn’t bother him, but he laughs weakly when Minghao asks if he is okay. “I was just getting used to it,” he says, because four years can feel like blinking when they are this old. “I liked having him here.”

“I know, sweetheart.” Minghao mouths at his shoulder. “But he needs this. They both do.”

“What about what I need?” Junhui asks, hushed. The wound is still fresh, pink around the edges, slow to stitch back together after so many months held open.

“Am I not enough?” Minghao teases, voice gentle because he knows how it hurts. He too feels the loss of Mingyu around them so keenly; the kitchen is quiet, the bed is unmade. 

Junhui turns to face him with shining eyes. “You are more than enough.” He punctuates it with a kiss, pushes Minghao against the kitchen counter, rests their foreheads together. They breathe each other in. Minghao clings to Junhui’s waist and allows himself this sadness. “I just wish we could all be together. It never feels quite right to be so far apart.”

The house feels like a graveyard without Mingyu there. 

They leave Càdiz two months later. 

____________________________________________________________________________

 _Hoedspruit, South Africa  
_ _May, 2026  
_ ____________________________________________________________________________

The landing is rough. It kicks up violent clouds of dust and rattles their bodies to the bone; Seokmin has his eyes closed and his seatbelt on, knuckles white around the straps across his chest and the bones of Jeonghan’s wrist where it rests on his thigh. Mingyu spent the two hour flight pacing, brimming with restless energy and the beginnings of adrenaline. Junhui was asleep the moment they got into the air. He only wakes up once the plane comes to a stop and Minghao stands, dislodging his head from its resting place. 

He waits until the pilot is distracted, feeding rapid Afrikaans into the radio, then he turns to the others. 

“I’ll need at least ten minutes,” he says. The lack of weight between his shoulder blades feels uncomfortable; they are all casually dressed and empty handed; Jeonghan’s trigger finger keeps twitching against his knee. “Try not to make too much noise.”

Mingyu and Seokmin each pick up a black bag and sling it over their shoulder. They leave the plane first, inviting a blast of dry highveld air into the body of the plane, thick with dust and the sun-dried smell of thatch. Minghao steps down after them and Junhui and Jeonghan follow close behind, flanking him. 

They walk across the tarmac in a formation loose enough that it doesn’t look like one at all. The arrowhead is incomplete; Minghao notices. They all do. 

Hoedspruit Air Force Base hasn’t served anyone with a legally acceptable objective in over a decade. Even if they were to step off the plane with weapons in their hands, it is very likely that nobody would cast a second glance their way. However, there is a delicacy required in pulling information out of a half-stranger who has no motive to help you beyond whatever opportunity he sees in doing so. 

Minghao knows a lot of people, pulls a lot of strings. Some of the strings pull back. 

Johan Visser is smoking a cigarette in a camping chair, flanked by two bodyguards with limp holds on their rifles that tighten as their group approaches. Minghao met him seven years ago because it is in his interest to be in the good graces of powerful people, and Visser controls sixty percent of the illegal diamond trading this side of the border. 

Last time they saw each other he said that Minghao looked as though he hadn’t aged a day. Minghao had swallowed a smile. 

“Howzit, boys?” Visser calls. He holds his cigarette between his teeth and spreads his arms out wide. “Welcome to Hoedspruit.”

“Smells like shit,” Jeonghan mutters in Korean. 

Minghao bows his head and says, “Thank you,” in English. 

“How was the ride over?” Visser asks, standing up.

“Fine.”

Visser laughs—this crackling, dying sort of sound. “Forgot how talkative you were, hey? Come. We’ll talk inside. I’ll leave my guard dogs outside if you leave yours.”

Junhui tenses. “It would be my pleasure to rip his tongue out and feed it to the lions on the other side of the fence,” he hisses in Mandarin, and though Visser clearly doesn’t understand, the tone of his words are unmistakable. 

“ _Bǎobèi.”_ Minghao leaves no room to argue between the syllables. Junhui is an intelligent and careful man but even Minghao, who has known him through empires and civilizations, who understands his next steps as though they were his own, is still capable of being caught off guard by him.

Jeonghan once said that if russian roulette were a person, it would be Wen Junhui. He sounded envious. Minghao thinks, if they weren’t connected by their very souls, he would be afraid.

Visser leads the way inside a small brick building with a thatched roof. It’s only as large as a single room; a grand mahogany desk sits at the centre, extravagant and out of place. Two more men with guns move to stand on either side of the door once they pass through it and Minghao looks at them over his shoulder, and then at Visser, an eyebrow raised. 

“Ah, it’s just business, _boet._ I’m old but I’m not stupid.” Visser lights another cigarette. He’s taking his time. Minghao takes a deep breath. “Now tell me: what brings you to South Africa?” Minghao glances at the corners of the ceiling and Visser laughs. “No wires in here. This country barely has the money for electricity, they’re not wasting it on us.”

He could be lying, but it doesn’t matter. Minghao pulls a photograph out of his pocket and slides it along Visser’s desk. “We’re looking for someone.” 

Visser unfolds the photograph. He whistles. Leans back in his chair. “Eish. One of your boys?”

“You know him.”

“I do.” 

Four minutes have already passed. Minghao doesn’t like relying on other people, but he doesn’t have enough information to find Soonyoung on his own. Visser has helped him in the past, willingly so despite his reputation for being selfish and psychotic, but something in the way his eyes keep darting over Minghao’s shoulder makes him feel like this time won’t be as easy.

“You sure you wanna find him?” Visser asks. “Seems like a liability to me.”

Six minutes. “I’m sure. We can pay the same as last time.”

“Double,” pushes Visser.

“Triple if you get to the point,” Minghao snaps. Visser grins like a shark, leans back in his chair like the danger has been averted simply because money will be changing hands. He is nothing but a magpie draped in bullets and cheap tobacco. Pathetic.

“He killed the head of the Pretoria ring. Five days ago. Must be some kind of maniac, your friend. They have people everywhere—this country fucking reeks of them.”

“So they killed him?” Minghao tries not to sound hopeful.

“No. They’re taking him somewhere.” Visser clicks his fingers and one of the guards walks over with a map and a stack of satellite images that Visser spreads along the tabletop. His finger hovers for a few seconds before it taps twice along a river just south of the air base. “They should be here by now.” His finger drags up the river and into the green expanse of the national park to the east. “If they’re heading into the Kruger, you’re fucked. He’ll be in Mozambique by the end of the day.”

Minghao nods. Checks his watch. “You’ll get the money in 48 hours.” He bows his head and turns around only to be met with the barrel of a gun aimed at his chest. He sighs and turns back.

“It’s just business, _boet,_ ” says Visser, gun steady, smile sharp. 

  
  
  
  
  


Minghao walks out of the hut with blood drying around the bullet holes in his shirt and two photographs in his hand. One of them is grainy but unmistakably Soonyoung; Minghao could mould the lines of his body into clay with his eyes closed. The next shows the plates of an armoured truck.

When he looks up he finds an air base littered with bodies and blood, and amongst it, a hulking black Jeep with the engine running.

“Took your time,” Mingyu calls from the driver’s seat. 

Junhui is leaning against the back door, now fully fitted head to toe with gear, all black from his hair to his boots. Minghao wonders, sometimes, how he can still feel such strong desire for a man he has known for so long, has seen more often than his own reflection, but Junhui is nothing if not surprising. 

His eyes assess Minghao as he comes closer, follows his appreciative gaze with a knowing smirk. Junhui crouches down to pull something out of the bag laying open at his feet and holds it up like an offering.

The swords settle between Minghao’s shoulder blades like an outcast angel retrieving their wings.

He circles the bonnet and swings himself into the passenger seat. Jeonghan has already claimed the middle seat below the sunroof, sniper laying across the tops of his thighs. Junhui and Seokmin kick down the back seats to give them room to lay flat, to move around, weapons and ammunition spilling out of the other bag by their feet.

“So?” Mingyu asks. He gives himself away in his tapping fingers along the steering wheel. Not that he ever tries to hide how he’s feeling. Not like the rest of them.

“Go south. Follow the river,” says Minghao.

“Is he—”

“We’ll get him, Mingyu. Start driving.”

  
  
  
  
  


The landscape is dry and broken. It speeds past in a blur as Mingyu pushes the accelerator to the floor and weaves in and out of cars with precision, aiming for the mountains ahead while Jeonghan whines fruitlessly about getting whiplash. Minghao hasn’t spent a lot of time in Africa but he has watched it burn and smother out its fires from a distance. A kaleidoscope of chaos and culture and wilderness; treated like a child’s toy to be tugged back and forth between the hands of hungry white men for too long; resilient. It makes sense for Soonyoung to find himself trapped in her clutches after so many years of evading any kind of capture. It is the kind of lion’s den Soonyoung walks into willingly because he thinks he will walk out just as easily. 

“Have you found it?” Minghao asks, looking into the rearview mirror.

“Still looking,” Junhui responds, fingers flying over the keyboard of a stolen military laptop, hijacking satellites and zeroing in on the canyon for any sign of the truck; of Soonyoung.

Mingyu’s grip on the steering wheel spasms. His jaw is tight enough to grind glass between his molars. Minghao turns in his seat to watch his profile as he says, “You need to relax. You will be no good to this mission if you are not thinking clearly.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Minghao says quietly. “We’re all worried. We’ll also need to get out of there as quickly as possible and you’re the fastest driver. So stay focused, and stay in the car. No matter what.”

Mingyu’s shoulders relax a fraction—flattery breaks him down as quickly as ice in hot water. “Alright. Sorry.”

Minghao pats his thigh and turns back to face Junhui, who turns the laptop around to face the front. “Got him.” Jeonghan and Seokmin crowd him to watch the satellite feed where it shows three cars and an armoured truck leaving a trail of dust through farmland. Minghao’s heart leaps into his throat. “We need to get them before they reach the canyon road—there’s too many trees, we’ll be stuck in a line.”

“ETA?” asks Minghao.

“Three minutes.”

Junhui’s words ripple through the group like they were the key to a vault: all the cogs and bolts begin to move at once, cause and effect, one after the other. Mingyu changes gears and slams the accelerator and Jeonghan barks at him to open the sunroof as he slides a full magazine into his rifle. Seokmin loads two pistols, tucks them against his ribs, and pulls an AK-47 out of the bag at his feet. He slides to the back of the boot and opens the latch, giving him an unobstructed view of the rear. Dust chases them like a demon. 

“Anything from the bag, my dear?” Junhui asks sweetly, offering Minghao a handgun as though it were a rose. Minghao takes it but declines the extra ammunition. 

Junhui raises an eyebrow. “Only gives you ten shots.”

“That’s ten more than I need.”

Mingyu laughs and Minghao blows them both a kiss before opening his window and maneuvering himself out and onto the roof. 

The dust kills any chance of sneaking up on the convoy, but they still manage to get within ten metres of it before anyone realises something is wrong. By that time it’s too late—Junhui is leaning half his body out of the car to accommodate for the grenade launcher over his shoulder, and the car closest to them gets ripped off the road in an explosion of fire and metal.

Seokmin fires at the next car as Mingyu gets the Jeep parallel to the truck, fighting for space on the dirt. Jeonghan emerges gun-first through the sunroof. He taps Minghao’s ankle with the barrel: _I’ll cover you._

Minghao waits until they swing close enough, then he jumps. The landing is slippery but the truck has roof racks that keep him from flying off the other side. Two bullets ricochet off the metal before Jeonghan takes out the driver of the last car and Seokmin tosses a grenade at them like an afterthought, leaving them burning and smoking in the dust they leave behind.

Mingyu gets them behind the truck and Jeonghan swaps out his rifle for the grenade launcher. It is difficult to be delicate when you’re moving at one hundred kilometres an hour, but Minghao has been in tighter spots than this, so he manages. He gets as far away from the back doors as he can, pulls the gun out of its holster, aims it at a random spot on the roof and shoots a pattern of dents into the metal: one, two-three, four, five-six. A quick _hello_ and _move out of the way_.

He looks up and nods. 

Jeonghan winks and pulls the trigger.

The truck lurches forward upon impact and Minghao almost falls, but he corrects himself just in time. Jeonghan has to do it again before the doors buckle and fall off their hinges, causing Mingyu to swerve dangerously to avoid getting struck, Jeep rattling into the grass and around to chase the front of the convoy. 

Minghao drops down into the vehicle with one hand on the roof and the other wrapped around the hilt of a sword, poised to swing, but—

Everyone in the truck is dead.

Soonyoung looks up from his seat on the floor with a grin that suggests they might be meeting each other for dinner instead of barrelling through the highveld with gunshots ringing around them like rain. “Help me out, would you?” He holds up his bound wrists.

Minghao falls to his knees and pulls their foreheads together to convince himself that Soonyoung is okay. Once he feels him breathing for himself, feels his pulse at his neck, he lets him go. He pulls a dagger from his boot and makes quick work of the zip-ties. “You’re insufferable,” he mutters.

“Missed you too.” Soonyoung grins, rubbing the fading marks around his wrists. “I mean I’m always happy to see you but right now I’m—”

Minghao doesn’t hear the gunshot. He only sees the panic in Soonyoung’s eyes, and then he sees nothing. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It takes

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


twelve

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


seconds.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


On average.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


This one was clean: a bullet to the back of the head. 

  
  
  


It takes ten.

  
  
  


Minghao wakes up on the floor of the truck with Soonyoung’s face hovering over his, blue-black hair creating a curtain around their temples and worry receding from his eyes like the tide. “Welcome back,” he exhales, pulling away. 

Minghao chokes on his first breath, and then he is back on his feet. Dying is never a positive experience. He likens the feeling to a sustained piano note: there is nothing else in the darkness save for this tremulous minor key that never wavers, never fades, as though it is threatening a different kind of eternity. Entrapment. Suffocation. Finality. 

But the note always ends. The scale cascades back down, third finger over the thumb, sharps and flats and a rattling breath. _Da capo._ From the beginning.

“Sorry about that,” Soonyoung says. “I must’ve missed one.”

“Clearly,” Minghao says, voice rough. Soonyoung picks up his dagger from the floor and spins it around like a pencil before gripping the hilt. He doesn’t really need the weapon—out of everyone he’s probably the most lethal when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, evident in the bodies piled around them in the truck, but a little extra caution never goes astray.

“Where are the others?” Soonyoung asks, jumping down from the truck where it is caught on an embankment, the driver and his passenger no doubt slumped over the dashboard with bullets between their eyes.

Minghao juts his chin towards the plume of black smoke further down the road, and the Jeep roaring back to them.

“Is he with you?” Soonyoung asks softly. 

“Why do you think we’re here?”

Soonyoung’s expression cracks, a hairline fracture down the centre, at the corners of his mouth, but he stands his ground as the Jeep pulls up in front of them. Mingyu hasn’t even pulled the car to a complete stop before he’s tearing out of the driver’s seat and closing the distance between them to gather Soonyoung into his arms, one hand coming up to cradle Soonyoung’s head against his collarbone and the other wrapping around his shoulders. 

He looks so small in Mingyu’s arms. Minghao thinks he shrinks himself to fit, as though Mingyu isn’t constantly reshaping himself to accommodate for others—curling over, crouching down, bending backwards. 

They love each other. This is incontestable. The way they exist together and apart feels like motions and tides, catch and release; a solar flare swallowed whole. 

But Soonyoung’s precarious relationship with himself is a shaky foundation for an eternity spent at someone else’s side. Mingyu knows this and still, he waits. Everytime Soonyoung runs away, he pauses, puts down roots, gives Soonyoung something to come back to. Mingyu is his true North, the weight around his ankle, and perhaps the very reason they find their way back to each other at all. 

“I can’t breathe, Minggu-yah.” Soonyoung laughs into his collar, and Mingyu pulls away only to bend down and bring Soonyoung into a kiss. Soonyoung instantly pushes up into it, opening his mouth and cradling Mingyu’s jaw in his hands like he is made of gold. Mingyu holds him tight by the waist, eyebrows pulling together, and Minghao knows what it is to kiss and be kissed by each of them, but not like this.

“Alright boys, break it up,” Jeonghan calls out of the car window, palm slapping against the door. Seokmin tries to be subtle about wiping the tear tracks off his cheek but Minghao catches the movement with a grin. Seokmin pokes his tongue out in return. 

The happy suspension of the moment collapses like a bridge into water when Junhui steps out of the car with a thunderstorm behind his eyes. He takes hurried strides over to Minghao and suddenly his hands are everywhere, checking for bloodstains, checking for an explanation. Minghao gives it to him gently: “My head. A bullet clean in the back.” 

Junhui’s fingers reach behind his head to touch the matted hair. He still takes every one of Minghao’s deaths so personally, says he feels it like a hiccup when it happens, not too dissimilar to the feeling of walking upstairs in the darkness and misjudging the final step: freefall, but only for a second. He doesn’t feel it for the others. Minghao wishes he didn’t either.

Junhui tips their foreheads together. “You need to be more careful, _bǎobèi_.”

Minghao puts his hand over Junhui’s heart, fingers splayed wide. “I will,” he says, quietly amused to be on the receiving end of such advice for once. He doesn’t take it lightly. Not checking all of Soonyoung’s kills was a foolish lapse in judgement; an elementary mistake. But even Minghao, for all the ways his body can stitch itself back together and all the winters that have passed him by, is still human. 

They are in the car for less than a minute before Soonyoung starts talking. 

“So. Crazy idea. Stay with me. What if we turned around and went to the place they were trying to take me?”

Mingyu blanches. “We’re trying to get you out of here, not hand deliver you to a torture chamber! Are you kidding me? Do you know how long it took me to—”

“Mingyu, stop talking,” Jeonghan says, hitting the back of his headrest. He turns to Soonyoung sitting in the passenger seat. “What did you do?”

“Well it’s not what I _did_. Necessarily.” Soonyoung's eyes cut to Minghao. “They know.”

Jeonghan swears under his breath.

“How many?” demands Minghao.

“Everyone in the convoy and then whoever was waiting for us. The men in the truck were talking about it because they thought I couldn’t understand…” He hesitates, closes and opens his mouth.

“Spit it out,” Jeonghan snaps.

“They took a vial of my blood last night,” Soonyoung adds quietly. 

The implication sits heavy between them like an extra passenger, overcrowded and unwelcome. This hasn’t happened for a few years. Minghao hoped they wouldn’t have to deal with it for a few years longer, but science speeds up every day. There’s only so many times you can come back to life in front of other people before it kicks up a fuss.

He reaches for the bag at his feet and slots a full magazine into his handgun before passing it to Soonyoung, grip first. “No loose ends.”

Mingyu shifts gears and turns the car around in one fluid movement.

  
  
  
  
  


The first time all six of them fought together was in 1914, amongst the mud and ashes of a country that didn’t belong to them. 

Seokmin still fought like he was mortal. It was a hard habit to let go of. Jeonghan spent his first fight at the treeline and the breaks in choreography threw Minghao off—he kept expecting to see Jeonghan ducking and spinning between them with his hair flying in a curtain of ink and blood sprays, but Junhui filled the gaps like water. Mingyu used his stature and Soonyoung used whatever he could. It was imperfect, but it was war. 

As night falls on the mountains and their trees, the six of them move like they had never separated for a moment. 

The base was easy to locate. It sits nestled between the mountains at the end of a narrow dirt road, a smattering of single-storey buildings hastily built on a flattened piece of land and at the end, a concrete mass, half held up by scaffolding. A generator sits in the middle of it all. It looks far too large to simply be for lights and electricity.

“What did they say this place was, again?” Seokmin whispers.

“They didn’t,” Soonyoung replies, holding his rifle up steady and leading the group forward. At his signal, Junhui and Mingyu break off to the sides, and Jeonghan brings up the rear with Minghao. The terrain is unfamiliar, and it is dark—he would be no use to them if he stayed on the outskirts.

They surround the first building. Voices float out through the open windows. Minghao takes a sword in each hand and presses his back against the wall beside the front door. Jeonghan presses himself on the other side, a bulky automatic held steady in both hands. The longer part of his fringe has flopped over his right eye and he flicks it away with an impatient jerk of his head. The image throws Minghao back some hundred years like a carnival game, presents him with a memory of Jeonghan in Paris that burns bright as a star for all of two seconds, and then it is gone. 

Minghao blinks himself back to the present and Jeonghan is grinning at him: achingly familiar, beautiful and dangerous. His mouth moves— _three-two-one_ —and then he kicks down the door and starts shooting.

They take the first two buildings like that. Quick, clean, coordinated. Despite how heavily armed everyone they encounter seems to be, they were evidently not expecting anyone to turn up. It’s almost too easy, and then they enter the warehouse. 

“Watch out!” Mingyu yanks Seokmin by the sleeve to pull him out of the firing line of a heavy machine gun mounted on a small stack of sandbags. 

Everyone retreats back behind the thick concrete walls on either side of the entrance. Minghao dares to peek and is greeted with another spray of bullets. The number of voices inside grows, all yelling out in languages Minghao cannot piece together. There is no way to know how many men are inside.

“We need to toss something in,” Jeonghan pants. “Fuck getting shot by that thing.” He leans around Minghao to try and motion to Seokmin to use one of the grenades clipped to his vest, but just as Seokmin reaches for it, the shooting pauses, and Junhui moves.

Minghao swears and runs in after him, one step behind Soonyoung. He covers him with his gun until they’re close enough to the guards that Minghao can spear them through the stomach and make drainage wells of their throats. 

He falls into the familiar rhythm of fighting by their sides. 

Junhui moves through the space like wildfire, a dagger in each hand, sending him cursory glances and half dead bodies to finish off. Mingyu elbows a man in the face, pulls him into a headlock and uses him as a shield while he shoots two more men with brutal precision. Jeonghan and Seokmin blaze through a group together, Jeonghan’s fluid striking patterns complemented by Seokmin’s use of brute force and well placed blades. Soonyoung moves around them with steady feet and shoots, one after another after another. 

Minghao loses sight of Junhui for three seconds. That’s all it takes.

Someone reloads the heavy machine gun while they are distracted. Junhui is sent flying three metres back, head cracking so loud on the concrete that it echoes like another gunshot.

The echo of sensation burns like acid in Minghao’s chest. Searing fingers tear at his lungs and try to push his ribs apart and he slashes through three faceless, unimportant bodies before he reaches Junhui and instantly drops his swords to take Junhui’s head in his hands. 

It never gets any easier, watching Junhui die. 

Despite the years behind them and the years ahead, Minghao believes he will never reckon with anything as monumental as watching the most vivacious man he knows grow still and lifeless in his arms. The knowledge that it is temporary does little to ease the way his soul feels as though it has become unstuck at the corners. “Junhui,” he breathes, “ _Bǎobèi—_ ”

“Move him!” Soonyoung yells. Sound comes back to Minghao like a shock. Jeonghan barrels into him and hauls Junhui back by the shoulders to drag him outside behind the safety of the concrete, at the foot of the scaffolding. Minghao follows, swords back in his hands, grip flexing as he paces.

  
  
  
  
  


Junhui asked him, once, what his greatest fear was. They were on the deck of a ship, sailing along an ocean that was yet to be measured, and their hair was long enough to tangle in the wind. Minghao had looked over at Junhui and said: “My greatest fear is losing you.” 

“Ah, but how can you possibly lose me?” Junhui held a hand up to the sky and smiled. “I will never leave you. It shall be you, me, and the sun.” He drew a circle in the air. Dawn melting into dusk. A gentle palm held over Minghao’s heart. “Always and forever.” 

  
  
  
  
  


It has been almost a minute. “Jeonghan,” Minghao says shakily.

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s taking too long. He’s still bleeding.”

The gunfire flares up. The others are pushed back to the entrance, forced onto the defensive with three of their men on the sidelines. They all emerge outside at once and cast worried glances over the barrels of their guns. Seokmin reloads desperately. “Is he awake?” he asks.

“Not yet,” Jeonghan says, careful eyes watching Minghao as he watches Junhui.

Time, as endless as she seems, stills. Minghao teeters on a precipice. In one hand he holds a string, pure white and fluid, and on the other end is Junhui: raw life and power. This is what keeps him steady—this is what tethers, what holds, what grows. Through centuries of summers, through oceans and valleys, Minghao’s connection to Junhui is what carries him. 

He has never had to fully reckon with the idea of losing him, for he knows no life without him. An immortal man with no world in which to live—what an impossible task.

It takes two minutes and three seconds.

Junhui sucks in a rattling breath. Minghao kneels over his body and presses a shaking hand to his chest where it is slowly, _finally_ , starting to stitch itself back together. 

“Hello,” Junhui croaks at him, going a little cross eyed with the effort of holding Minghao’s gaze. 

“Hello,” Minghao breathes, tipping his forehead down to meet his beloved’s. He allows himself two steadying exhales before he stands up, slowly, deliberately. 

Everyone is watching him. Anger is not something Minghao truly feels often, but when it is controlled, it makes for the most beautiful weapon. 

“Mingyu. Take Junhui to the car. Blow up the generator on your way.” Mingyu nods and pulls Junhui off the concrete by the hand. Minghao reaches for the pistol strapped to his thigh and checks the clips. “How many men do they have left?” he asks Soonyoung.

“Twenty, maybe more. We haven’t breached the upper levels.”

Minghao nods. “Stay out here.” 

“Hey woah, no,” Seokmin moves to block his path. “Hyung, what are you doing? We don’t have eyes inside. You need backup.”

“I was fighting battles before gunpowder even existed, Seokmin, do not think it makes a difference,” Minghao says heatedly. “Move out of my way.”

Seokmin stands his ground. “I know how you feel, but you don’t have to go alone.”

 _You know a fraction of what I feel_ , thinks Minghao. He looks at Jeonghan’s hand on Seokmin’s shoulder, the culmination of a century of trying and failing and trying again. Their love is just as real, and Minghao knows how hard earned it is, but comparing the two is like holding a candle to a forest fire. 

At the smallest insistence from Jeonghan’s touch, Seokmin steps back. Jeonghan hands Minghao his gun and he grins, all knives and shell casings. 

“Tear them apart.”

An explosion in the distance gives Minghao the signal to burst back into the warehouse. Soonyoung blows him a kiss as he goes.

With the generator out, the building is plunged into broken darkness, but he had the first floor layout memorised within ten seconds of the initial breach; he moves greedily through the bodies that remain. The first man shouts out in warning and earns a bullet between his teeth. Minghao crushes the next man’s nose with the butt of the rifle, shoots him under the chin and then over his shoulder to take out two more in one go. Jeonghan’s gun clicks empty and he tosses it, uses a random gun from the floor to check his kills, and moves on to the stairs.

The building is a half-made mess, like they had big plans for it but the money dried up too fast to follow through. Bullets shower down the centre of the stairwell, biting off chunks of brick and metal. Minghao doesn’t slow down. He takes a bullet for his boldness but it’s worth it for the way he swings around the railing and forces one of the men’s skulls against the metal with a sickening crack. 

He dodges a punch from the next man, spins, brings his sword out of its sheath and down through his torso in one fluid arc. Before the blade has even left his body Minghao is plunging the second one through another man’s heart, both arms extended, feet perfectly planted. He pulls his swords back to his side and the bodies slump like ragdolls. 

The second level is divided into rooms. Minghao doesn’t waste time with the first two, giving them grenades and bullets instead of the privilege of his singular attention. Whoever makes it out gets a cursory blade across the neck.

The third and final room explains the size of the generator. 

It looks like a hospital laboratory was airlifted into the building. It is completely out of place—everything polished and modern, beds lined along the far wall and a maze of tables and machinery in the middle. The men here are not armed; they hold their hands up and throw panicked IsiZulu at his feet; Minghao kills them anyway. 

Once they are dealt with he makes a beeline for the centrifuges, kicks them to the ground and shoots them to pieces. All this for a measly ten milliliters of blood. To burn Soonyoung’s thumbprint off the map, cover his tracks, make him back into the ghost he was taught to be. 

The things Minghao goes through for Kwon Soonyoung. He deserves an entire century of peace and quiet.

Minghao obliterates the entire room for good measure, leaves the machines sizzling and spitting from their exposed wires. _No loose ends_. It has carried them through decades of missions together. It will carry them through decades more. 

He emerges from the building covered in dust and blood that doesn’t belong to him. Soonyoung gets to him first, checking him needlessly. Minghao allows it. “Get captured again, and I’ll kill you myself,” he says sweetly.

Soonyoung barks out a laugh. “Deal.”

A new truck pulls up, this time with Jeonghan at the wheel. “A stunning performance from Xu Minghao,” he calls dramatically. “But I’m bored and tired now. Get in the car. Loverboys in the back.” 

“What about me?” Seokmin says indignantly from the passenger seat as Soonyoung collapses into Mingyu’s side and Minghao curls branding fingers around Junhui’s waist in the backseat. 

Jeonghan coos and pinches Seokmin’s cheek. “Favourites in the front,” he says. The car explodes in an uproar of voices and Jeonghan cackles with his head tossed back before speeding out of the dirt and back down the road, leaving the mess of buildings and bodies on fire behind them. 

Minghao doesn’t let go of Junhui for a moment.

____________________________________________________________________________

 _Minghao and Junhui  
_ _Shanghai, Republic of China_  
 _September, 1931_  
____________________________________________________________________________

Minghao is awoken in the middle of the night by the familiar sounds of piano keys twisting through the house like incense. He reaches out with his right hand and finds the mattress empty and cold beside him. He didn’t hear Junhui get up; a side effect of living with someone who has spent centuries learning the best ways to be silent.

He pads downstairs in his pyjamas, robe left in the bedroom. The dregs of summer linger enough for them to leave most of the windows open, and the house is warm. Though the trees along their street and around French Park absorb most of the noise, Minghao still hears the distant sounds of cars and people along Avenue Joffre as he reaches the bottom of the stairs and comes to a stop in the double archway. 

The grand piano belonged to the French couple that lived here before them. Junhui had taken one look at it and bypassed any decision Minghao might have made about the house. “We’ll take it,” he told the realtor while he was mid-sentence about the structural integrity of the ceilings. “It’s perfect.”

“Well then.” The realtor grinned at them with his arms spread wide. “ _C’est à vous._ ”

They have spent almost nine years here—falsified papers tying them to the manicured lawns and the red trimming of the rooftop and window arches. There is only so long they can stay in one place where the people know their faces, when they see all the ways they do not change.

Junhui hasn’t bothered with a shirt. His back catches slices of moonlight and shadow in equal turn, posture perfect as he plays. After a few moments the melancholy tune twists into something a little brighter: one of Minghao’s favourites.

Minghao smiles and closes the distance between them. “The whole street will hear you at this hour.” He drags light fingers across Junhui’s shoulder blades and watches how his skin jumps with it.

Junhui slows but doesn’t stop. “I can’t sleep.”

Minghao hums and threads his fingers through Junhui’s hair, a comforting drag from his ear to the crown of his head and down to his nape. When he goes to pull his hand back, Junhui catches it in his own, musical fingers around his wrist. He brings the soft skin to his mouth and kisses it with his eyes closed. The parlour falls quiet. 

“What is it?” Minghao asks softly. 

Junhui slouches. The fingers around Minghao’s wrist move up around his forearm and gently tug, inviting him to step around the piano bench into the space between Junhui’s body and the keys. With nowhere else to go, Minghao brings his right knee up and straddles Junhui on the bench, hands on his bare shoulders to steady himself as he settles into his lap. “Hello,” he says.

“Hello,” Junhui says back, voice low. His hands move to Minghao’s waist beneath the silk of his shirt, thumbs rubbing along the edges of his ribcage. Minghao hums an echo of the song he was playing earlier as he traces aimless shapes around Junhui’s ears, his neck, his chest. It usually helps him fall asleep, but right now he looks tired in a way that cannot be fixed by laying down.

It is to be expected. Their shoulders bear many weights. Junhui carries his demons so quietly that Minghao sometimes forgets he has any at all.

“I have been dreaming about dying,” Junhui says into the hollow of Minghao’s throat, never one to dress up his words unless he needs to. “Terrible, violent dreams. You are not there. I am alone every time. I die in darkness, and I never wake up from it.”

Minghao’s chest clenches. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“And what am I doing now?” He noses up along Minghao’s throat, the angle of his jaw. “Take my mind off it.”

“Would have been a little easier in the bed, _xìng gǎn_.”

“But not half as interesting,” Junhui grins, and leans in to kiss Minghao properly. 

Minghao indulges him, because he knows that Junhui will reach out again when he needs it. If this is what will heal him in this moment, then Minghao will give it gladly.

Junhui moves his hands down to the backs of Minghao’s knees and tugs their bodies closer together, silk against cotton. Minghao gasps into his mouth and rolls his hips, earning a soft noise from Junhui as a reward. He is pliant when he wants to be. Tonight, he feels fragile under Minghao’s searching hands, bones and muscle and overheated skin; his fingers shake when he reaches for the buttons on Minghao’s shirt. 

“Junhui.” Minghao smears his name along the corner of his mouth, his cheek, his ear. “I’m here. It’s okay.” 

Junhui clings to him like a weapon but he treats him like salvation. Nothing sharp exists between them save for the teeth they use to paint bruises on each other’s skin, the blades they pass back and forth like gifts, blood drawn only ever by mistake, smeared along their chins and their chests as they move against each other, inside each other. 

Tonight they have nothing but their hands, but it is enough. Minghao pulls Junhui out of his trousers as he kisses him, wraps his fingers tight, persuades moans from him like an interrogation. The friction shouldn’t be enough but it is--Minghao feels desperate as he pushes against the planes of Junhui’s stomach and pulls the hair at his nape, tongue curling into his lover’s mouth. Junhui’s hips jolt up hard enough to overbalance; one of his hands catches the piano keys and the broken notes ring out amongst their harsh breathing. 

“Minghao,” Junhui gasps. 

“I’m here. I’m here.” 

Nothing matters but this, and perhaps it never will.

Junhui keeps his fingers clenched on the fallboard as he breaks apart. Minghao kisses him through it and follows him eagerly, voice high and breaking, muscles clenched tight enough to snap. 

When their breathing has settled and the shadows have retreated, at least for now, Junhui reaches back for the piano keys and plays a tinkling scale, because he knows it will make Minghao laugh. And it does.


	2. part two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't read Maya's [Seokmin/Jeonghan prequel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25736320/chapters/62495551) then I really really recommend it. She's close to wrapping up too, and it will add some really fun context to this story.
> 
> Please know that I cried multiple times writing this and I think it's just because I got so attached to this little world and the way these six boys love each other. I truly hope it shows through.
> 
> The mild sexual content is no longer as mild but the rating is still M, for Metaphors.
> 
> If you listen to music while reading, turn [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw7aMVvPDmc) on when you get to Berlin. Here's the entire [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1aJesheoDnb2j37yMZ9MgD?si=0TmhWIlnQle_h4S2XC15BA)
> 
> Ok!!! Enjoy!!!!!!

* * *

_ Nairobi, Kenya  
_ _ June, 2026 _

* * *

“ _ Official images from the site show the aftermath of an explosion just east of Blyde River Canyon, four days ago. Authorities were alerted by locals concerned by the smoke. The area has since been closed off. No official word yet from police if this is linked to the recent gang activity in Pretoria or if _ —”

Mingyu turns the television off, bathing the dingy hotel room in silence. The sounds of the city bleed through the windows and settle around them like smog.

“Well,” Jeonghan says cheerily. “Been a while since we made the news.”

Soonyoung stands up from the bed in one agitated movement. “We should have left Africa days ago.”

“Relax,” Junhui says from the floor where he’s cleaning a knife set. He won it off the man who smuggled them across the Tanzanian border in the most one-sided game of poker Minghao has ever seen. “I’ve been keeping an eye on it. National authorities think it was either an inside job or an accident. Nobody else cares. Our faces haven’t surfaced anywhere.”

“Yet,” mumbles Soonyoung. 

Mingyu puts a hand on the nape of his neck and rubs circles with his thumb. Soonyoung’s shoulders relax at first—eyelids fluttering, leaning into Mingyu’s touch like it’s keeping him upright—but he shrugs off the comfort with a pinch between his brows. “Sorry,” he says softly. He kisses Mingyu’s palm and then he’s gone, the door clicking behind him.

Minghao sighs. “He’s just—”

“I know,” says Mingyu, flexing his hand. 

Jeonghan catches Minghao’s eye from where he’s resting against the headboard and jerks his head towards the door. 

The best way to move Mingyu along is to distract him, to show him a different way forward, around, to let him hold your hand when he reaches for it. 

Minghao nods. “Junhui and I are going to the market,” he tells Mingyu.

“We are?” asks Junhui.

When Mingyu doesn’t react, Jeonghan steps in like the scene is choreographed. It is, in a way—negotiating with people you have known for several lifetimes, whose every move you understand as your own, requires a special kind of finesse. 

“Go with them, Mingyu-yah,” he says, stretching his arms behind his head so that his back arches prettily. “Otherwise you can stay here and watch Seokmin fuck me, but you have to sit in that ugly chair in the corner and not make a single sound.”

Seokmin’s laughter rings out from the bathroom. Mingyu’s nose wrinkles and he instantly moves to find his wallet and a gun to tuck into the back of his jeans.

“I mean…” Junhui says, looking at Jeonghan appreciatively. Jeonghan winks at him. 

Minghao rolls his eyes and pulls Junhui up by the neck of his shirt.

  
  
  
  
  


It’s a fifteen minute walk to the market on Pumwani Road. The sun is hanging lazily behind the clouds and the crowds are loud and directionless as usual, cars kicking up dust and honking at people walking carelessly between the sidewalk and the street. The three of them can’t help the way they draw attention, but they are used to looking out of place.

Minghao was probably the first Chinese man to step foot in most countries. He’s quite used to the staring.

Nobody bothers them beyond calling out their prices as they pass; some women follow them a few steps with bargains they didn’t ask for. It isn’t until they walk past a shoe stall that a child tries to steal Junhui’s wallet. 

Junhui catches her bony wrist the second before she reaches into his pocket and he turns the motion into a handshake.

“Too slow,” he says in Swahili, grinning as she looks up at him with wide eyes. He holds up a finger, signalling her to wait, then he buys a hand of bananas from the next stall and gives it to her. She takes the fruit and sprints away before he can say another word.

Minghao shakes his head fondly. “What lesson are you teaching her? That if she steals she will be rewarded?”

“Isn’t that how it works?” Junhui says cheekily, bumping their shoulders together.

Mingyu walks a few steps in front of them. When he turns around, he has Junhui’s wallet clutched between his index and third finger. “And what is  _ my _ reward?” he asks with a blinding smile.

Minghao folds over in giggles. Junhui snatches his wallet back with a pout. “Jeonghan would be proud,” he says.

“A dangerous metric,” says Mingyu, but he looks pleased. He turns to survey the spread of fruit, nuts and seeds for a minute before relaying his order in English to the young man. 

The market is a mess of noise and dust and languages—Minghao’s senses are on overload after the past 72 hours of rattling plane rides and uncomfortable hotel rooms—but there is no mistaking the look in the young man’s eyes when he glances his way. 

Fear.

“I have a message for you,” he says, slowly, in English, vowels shaking with nerves. Junhui and Mingyu’s heads snap up, but Minghao isn’t looking at them. 

The man reaches behind himself and Mingyu instantly rearranges Minghao behind his own body, gun drawn at his hip, thumb on the safety, but the man doesn’t have a weapon, only a folded piece of paper which he holds out amongst the fruit flies. 

Minghao gently pushes Mingyu aside by the elbow to take it. He can feel Junhui at his back, surveying the crowd. He doesn’t need the protection, but he understands the instinct.

The paper is expensive. An address is stamped neatly in the centre: a cafe two streets down. 

_ Eleven o’clock _ , it says.  _ Come alone. _

“What is it?” Mingyu asks. 

Minghao shakes his head. He looks around, spinning in a tight circle, seeking out an anomaly in the crowd. It’s been a few years since anyone has caught up to them so easily—much longer since they have been civil about it. He has his suspicions about who it could be, but it doesn’t stop his stomach from dropping when he sees a blond man five stalls down, wearing an expensive suit and a smile. 

He looks at Minghao for just a second.

Then he is gone.

  
  
  
  
  


They split up overnight. Move into separate hotels. Minghao stays with Junhui but Jeonghan goes with Soonyoung, and Seokmin with Mingyu. Anyone who is aware of them will also be aware of their patterns. Best to throw them off the scent where they can. Soonyoung suggested going with Junhui but one look from Minghao was enough to silence the idea. 

Ten minutes before eleven, everyone settles into their positions, checks in on the comms, and Minghao approaches the cafe alone. He has daggers strapped under the ankles of his linen pants. More of a comfort than a necessity. His shoulders feel bare.

“Fuck,” Jeonghan says through the earpiece. “I’m blocked.” 

Minghao throws a casual glance skyward; the cafe is flanked by two buildings and its bustling terrace spills out onto the street, but the seating area is covered by a thick canopy. A clear shot from Jeonghan’s current position will be impossible unless the target happens to walk into a weak spot, and nobody with training would be so careless.

“Did you expect him to dance around with a target painted on his chest?” Soonyoung laughs, the sound crackling over the comms. He’s waiting in a stolen car across the street with Seokmin.

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

Minghao tunes them out. He’s had too many years of practise. “Mingyu,” he says quietly.

“I’ve got eyes,” comes the reply.

“Oohh, Jeonghannie, you’ve been outdone,” chides Seokmin. He and Soonyoung both yelp. 

“One more word out of either of you and I crack the windshield,” Jeonghan says sweetly. 

Mingyu says: “Back right corner. Navy suit. Terrible comb over.” Minghao ducks his head to hide a smile. 

“Good luck,” Seokmin says earnestly, and then they all go silent. 

The man from the markets is a stranger to Minghao, but the way he holds himself is familiar: the careful posture, the diplomatic smile and the lack of a formal greeting. He bares his perfect teeth at Minghao while he unbuttons his suit jacket and takes a seat.

“I took the liberty of ordering already. Hope you don’t mind.”

British accent. London. Refined. 

“MI6,” Junhui breathes. “Shit.” 

Minghao smiles carefully. One wrong move in this conversation could mean the difference between being on the run for 5 months and 5 years. “Not at all,” he says. “Mister…” 

“Jones.” 

Generic. Definitely not his real name. Not that it matters. Minghao has been working around smoke screens for centuries. 

As the waiter sets down their drinks, he evaluates the man before him. He looks every part the trained, controlled agent that he is supposed to. Ten years in service, maybe more. He has been shot before, in the right side—he favours his weight ever so slightly. His nose is a crooked map of past fights. His hands are sure. 

Minghao wonders how many men he has interrogated, and how the number compares to the years Minghao has spent snapping necks like his without a second thought. 

“Don’t I get an introduction?” Jones finally asks.

“Usually they print the target’s name at the top of the file.” 

“Usually, the target has a name.”

Minghao hums. Jones is watching him like a leopard crouched in the grass, tail twitching, ears flat, but he gives nothing away. He keeps his features still and steady as a mountain—chin tipped up, shoulders pressed back. Impenetrable. A fire burning within a glass house.

No wonder it took Seokmin almost a decade to stop looking at him like he was afraid. 

He makes a show of looking at his watch and says, “You may have ten minutes of my time.” 

“Got somewhere to be?” asks Jones. When he is met with silence, he clears his throat and places a manilla envelope on the table. “No doubt you’re aware of the unrest caused by Zama Khumalo’s death. Gauteng is on fire. The gangs have turned on each other and their fighting is endangering civilians, ruining property. The assasination even made the news, despite our efforts to keep things quiet.”

“Your efforts? What interest does MI6 have in South African gang activity?” 

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t trade state secrets over tea,” Jones says drily. “Regardless. I’m less interested in Khumalo’s death and more interested in the trail of bodies you and your team left behind in Hoedspruit.”

“They didn’t seem that important.”

“They weren’t.” Jones takes a photograph from the envelope and pushes it across the table. “Him, however.”

Minghao glances at the pixelated image of Johan Visser and frowns. “Don’t tell me we hijacked your mission.”

“No, but you did murder one of my best informants,” Jones says. Minghao raises an eyebrow. “He was very useful. Expensive, but useful.” 

Minghao understands—he’s certainly no stranger to using people. They are only means to an end. Ants on a hill. Visser was one part of a global network of footholds that he has been building and rebuilding since the turn of the twentieth century like a house of cards. 

So it’s not that Visser was a mole for a foreign government that surprises him, it’s that his death had large enough repercussions to follow them across three different borders and land Minghao in a pseudo interrogation with secret intelligence.

“Sorry I’m late!” 

Minghao tenses; Junhui’s voice is too clear to be coming from his earpiece. 

Junhui collapses into the chair between Jones and Minghao with a smile that shows all his teeth. “Traffic was terrible.”

Seokmin snickers over the comms; Mingyu shushes him. 

“You,” says Jones, leaning forward, eyes narrowing. “You’re not injured.”

Junhui chuckles, looking back and forth between them. “Am I supposed to be?” 

Another photo comes out of the envelope, and Minghao’s lungs turn to ice.

“Heavy machine gun. Imported. Incredibly illegal.”  _ Move him— _ “One of my men at the warehouse told me you got caught in the line of fire. That you got hit.”

_ Is he awake? _

_ Not yet. _

“I think you need new informants,” Junhui says. It sounds like he’s underwater. “Anyone hit by that kind of artillery wouldn’t be leaving the room unless they were in a body bag.” His thumb finds Minghao’s wrist under the table and digs into a pressure point,  _ hard _ . Minghao sucks in a breath. 

“Well,” says Jones, “considering you killed all my informants, I don’t have much of a choice.”

Minghao itches, suddenly and quite violently, to pick up the teaspoon next to his hand and use it to gouge out Jones’ trachea in broad daylight. He hates dealing with Intelligence. These men and women run two successful missions and suddenly they’ve got a god complex and a government willing to bury whatever bodies they leave behind.

There is only one way to truly learn from death. And it is not by causing it.

“I can’t help but notice,” he says calmly, tracing the rim of his teacup, “that it has been six minutes, and you have yet to ask me anything.”

“Five minutes on my watch,” says Jones.

“Yes, well, cheap knock-offs tend to run a little slow.”

Junhui visibly buries a smile, but Jones’ expression gives nothing away.

“We ran DNA tests on the blood left behind at the airbase,” he says. “Visser’s, the guards. Yours. Or, what I assume was yours, considering nobody else went into that office with you.” 

“And what did you find?” Minghao drawls. He knows, of course: they found nothing. When testing started to spread in the late 1980s, Soonyoung volunteered to test whether or not their death affected their DNA. Although the technology wasn’t nearly as accurate as it is now, it still showed that dying and coming back to life had enough of an impact on their DNA that they would never have to truly worry about being traced with it. 

Considering the number of times Minghao has left his own blood behind like a lipstick stain, it’s an invaluable asset.

“Well, first I found this.” Jones adds a photo to the pile and Minghao clenches his jaw; Visser was lying when he said there were cameras in the office. It didn’t seem like a problem at the time. Now, however— “All I had to do after that was make a phone call. It’s incredible, really, how quickly the tapestry unravels once you pull at the right thread.”

Jones empties the contents of the envelope onto the table like a bucket of pig’s blood. 

“Let’s start with something recent.” He taps a photo of Jeonghan: his hair is long enough to graze his jawline and he’s wearing a leather jacket. “Panama, 2025. Sixteen men killed with a sniper rifle illegally acquired from Egypt.” 

“Eighteen,” comes Jeonghan’s voice. “And the rifle was a gift from Soonyoung.” 

Soonyoung laughs nervously. 

Jones points to a CCTV image of Seokmin in a convenience store. “Osaka, 2022. Five men killed at close range. Eight more with a German rifle. No fingerprints. Only trace was the weapon, which led to a black hole in the market somewhere south of Frankfurt.” 

A photograph of Mingyu getting into a limousine. “Madrid. January. Cesar Almillo is found assassinated in his home. He was the owner of two of the largest casinos in Spain, and a subject of interest for both MI6 and Spanish authorities.”

“Because he was a corrupt and abusive asshole,” Mingyu says darkly. 

“And Zama Khumalo,” Jones says with finality, holding up a photo of Soonyoung, as though they don’t know whose death landed them here in the first place. “Former leader of the  _ Umlilo  _ ring of Pretoria and the pin in a proverbial grenade that has now been set off, leaving a broken, impoverished city to drown in its own ashes.”

Minghao leans back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other. He checks his watch. “You were thirty seconds over but I’ll forgive it. That last one was particularly enthralling. Very poetic.”

Jones visibly flounders, his careful mask cracking for this first time. Evidently he was expecting a grander reaction to the idea that the six of them have recognisable faces, that they—and their actions—are traceable. While it’s extremely inconvenient to be on Intelligence’s radar, it isn’t the first time. 

Being immortal in modern society makes certain things harder to get away with. Jeonghan enjoys lamenting the days where stowing away on a ship would solve all your problems, and Soonyoung enjoys using the opportunity to tell everyone how that is what caused his first death. Junhui can quote the retelling word for word. 

They will have to be even more careful about their next move—lay low for longer. The ability to come back from the dead isn’t very useful if you are stuck in a cell, and Minghao would like to avoid that outcome at all costs.

It doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy himself a little. 

“Have you ever been hunting, Agent Jones?” he begins, voice light. “It is a useless sport. Men think they are above the rest of the world and they constantly feel the need to assert it. In science, in life, in death. Everything needs to fit neatly beneath the sole of man’s boot. Exhausting, don’t you think? That everything we do must be evidence of our power and superiority.”

He touches the edge of a photograph of Junhui in Vienna. There is snow in his hair. He looks happy.

“The problem, you see, Agent Jones, is not the hunting. It’s the complacency. It is holding a double barrel shotgun and thinking you are safe, simply because your boots are soaked with the blood of an animal twice your size. But there are always more. Even predators know the value of working in groups. Therein lies the fallacy of man: he who considers himself strong enough to work alone is in fact the weakest of them all.”

Jones moves one inch to the left and a gentle click rings out. 

Junhui’s aim under the table is steady. His smile is sharp.

Jones sneers. “You wouldn’t.”

“You’re right. But he would.” Minghao nods at Junhui. “As would he.”

Jeonghan’s aim settles on Jones’ lapel like a kiss. He finally looks like he understands just how outnumbered he is. It strikes Minghao as a bizarre act of trust, for this man to have requested a meeting with a nameless murderer, knowing that he would not come alone, even though he was asked. 

Humanity continues to surprise Minghao. Even after all this time.

“It was good talking to you,” he says, standing up. “We will let you walk away this time.”

“That’s it?” Jones asks.

“Yeah, what gives?” Jeonghan echoes petulantly. Minghao holds up two fingers and Jeonghan sighs before obediently redirecting his aim. 

Minghao buttons up his suit jacket and smooths down the material. “It would be fruitless to ask you not to follow us. However, I will say this: if I see you again, I will run you through with a blade and hold it there until you die. Sometimes it takes a while—it depends on which organs you aim for. But I am a patient man, Agent Jones. I have all the time in the world.” He smiles serenely. “Enjoy your coffee. The blend here really is exquisite.”

* * *

_ Minghao, Jeonghan and Mingyu  
_ _ Monte Carlo, Monaco  
_ _ May, 1965 _

* * *

Minghao has been in enough cities across enough decades to feel the difference between affluence and extravagance, and somehow the tiny coastline of Monte Carlo holds both close to her heart, wears wealth like a champagne silk dress with a row of pearls around her neck. Everybody he sees is dressed in designer clothes, women with pointed sunglasses and silk scarves dancing around their necks; men in classic suits or cut shirts and boat shoes. 

The sun is dancing on the Mediterranean like it is the only ocean in the world. It would be a perfect picture, if not for the rumbling sounds of cars ripping past on the track, filling the air with fumes as they run practise rounds for this weekend’s Grand Prix. 

Minghao leans his elbows on the railing and watches a navy-blue Honda roll to a stop as five men dressed in black jumpsuits flock to it like flies. This section of the track sits directly behind the Hotel de Paris and the Casino adjacent; two gorgeous buildings dating back to a time that Minghao remembers only for its indulgence, when Mingyu made friends with royals and Minghao let himself float through parties with Junhui at his side, while Soonyoung picked pockets and Jeonghan relished in being one of the most beautiful men in the room, and then they all relished in each other at the end of every night—sometimes well into the next day.

A red Ferrari tears around the corner with a flare of noise and colour, speeding down the hill to Mirabeau, and someone leans their elbows on the railing beside Minghao’s.

“Predictable, isn’t he?”

Jeonghan hands Minghao a glass of champagne with a smile. His hair is hidden beneath a wide-brimmed hat and he has sunglasses hooked into the front of his shirt: all white, from head to toe, with trimmings of gold around his wrist and his neck, catching the sun like an invitation.

Minghao takes the drink and holds eye contact as he takes his first sip. Jeonghan watches him swallow.

“I didn’t know you were in Monte Carlo,” says Minghao.

“Mm, I got bored after Seokmin and Junnie left for their little holiday. Besides, Mingyu needs to look like he’s got a manager. Nobody drives on the track without a rich man watching from the stands.” Jeonghan does a little twirl. “Do I look like I care about cars?”

“You look like you care about getting onto a yacht,” Minghao grins. 

Jeonghan tips his champagne flute at Minghao. “Now you’re talking.”

If they were alone, Minghao would pull Jeonghan closer, nose along the expensive cologne at his throat, rest his hand over the thin material at his waist, his lower back. But there are curious eyes on them, so Minghao settles for a look that Jeonghan returns with a smile, tongue poking out between his teeth.

“Did they tell you where they were going?” Jeonghan asks. 

Minghao shakes his head. “East. They know where to call or write if they need to.” 

Somewhere around 1955, Seokmin began to complain that he hadn’t seen nearly as much of the world as the rest of them had. Jeonghan indignantly asked if their half-century together hadn’t been satisfying enough, and Seokmin had very bravely stomped his foot and said no, I want to see the whole world, and I want to see it with each of you. 

And so, every few years, one of them takes Seokmin to a new country—to live, to make memories, no matter how fast they might fade. Soonyoung took him back to Korea and taught him how to fish. Minghao took him to Australia, where the desert is beautiful, the rainforests reach like skyscrapers, and the beaches are whiter than snow. Mingyu took him to Milan to give him the wardrobe of his dreams. Jeonghan takes him everywhere else in between. And now it is Junhui’s turn.

“Soonyoung’s back in America, did he tell you?” Jeonghan says, wrinkling his nose. “Las Vegas.”

Minghao laughs. “He didn’t want to gamble somewhere a little more interesting?” He nods at the repurposed 19th century palace before them.

“He said something about eating lobster and I stopped listening after that. Mingyu is surprisingly relaxed about it.”

“Well, I’d say he’s aptly distracted.” 

Old habits die hard. Mingyu will probably never feel as at home as he does surrounded by money and refinement. According to him, the luxury car was man’s greatest invention; he has a garage full of them just outside London. Junhui jokes that if any of them could truly die, Mingyu would ask to be buried in a blue Jaguar E-Type.

The Ferrari reappears in a gorgeous rumble and comes to a smooth stop behind the Honda. Mingyu unfolds himself from the driver’s seat with some difficulty, unclips his helmet, and removes his gloves. He cuts an impressive silhouette in his racing jumpsuit, cinched at the waist, hugging the broad expanse of his back.

Jeonghan puts his thumb and index finger between his lips and whistles sharply. 

Mingyu spins around and looks searchingly at the stands, hand held up to shield his eyes from the sun. When he sees them, a beautiful smile breaks out on his face and he waves with both hands. Minghao laughs, light as his champagne, and waves back.

Jeonghan pats his shoulder. “Lunch time.”

  
  
  
  
  


They have food delivered to their suite. As one of the drivers, Mingyu has an opulent ocean-facing room in the Hotel de Paris, and Jeonghan throws the balcony doors open and demands they eat outside. 

Minghao dresses down and Mingyu takes a shower. Jeonghan pops another bottle of Dom-Perignon and sucks the foam off the neck of the bottle and his wrist. Minghao tugs him in by the waist to kiss the taste off his mouth, tongue tracing the bitter sweetness off his bottom lip. When they pull apart, he takes the bottle from Jeonghan’s slackened fingers and takes a swig for himself.

“ _ Santé _ ,” Jeonghan says breathlessly. 

“Don’t start anything without me!” Mingyu calls. 

“No promises,” Jeonghan calls back, eyes locked with Minghao’s.

Minghao winks. “Lunch first.” He walks onto the balcony with the champagne bottle hanging from his fingertips and the sun kissing his forearms and the tops of his feet.

They talk freely while they eat. Minghao speaks in Mandarin and the others respond in French to refine their accents. Mingyu is leagues ahead after spending so much time in Europe, and he says as much. Jeonghan says,  _ je m’en fou,  _ and throws a grape at him. 

After lunch is done, Minghao moves to lay in the bracket of Mingyu’s legs, head tipped back on his shoulder, hands high on the tanned skin of his thighs. Jeonghan remains seated across from them with his legs crossed and his sunglasses on. 

“Did he tell you what we’re doing here?” Mingyu asks, carding his fingers through Minghao’s hair. 

“No, but I assume it has something to do with the man driving for Honda.” He was escorted off the track by no less than three security guards. 

Jeonghan nods as he tops up his champagne. “The CIA has been following us around like a bad smell. They think there’s a plot to assassinate one of the sponsors.”

“Which, there is,” Mingyu says into Minghao’s ear, hands resting low on his stomach. “But it’s not Soviet. The guy paying us is… Swedish?”

“Danish,” Jeonghan corrects. “Though, quite frankly I don’t care where his allegiances lie—he’s paying big money for an easy job. If the man wants to start a few more political fires then so be it. America’s already trying to burn themselves a direct passage to hell, what’s one more going to do?” He takes one sip and tosses the rest over the balcony like it doesn’t suit him anymore. “Enough talk about politics. I’m tired.”

Minghao giggles and leans back to speak against Mingyu’s jaw. “Has he been like this the whole time?”

“Mostly,” Mingyu says, turning so their noses brush. “But it’s easy enough to shut him up.” He brings one of his hands up to cup Minghao’s jaw and presses their mouths together. Minghao melts into it, gasping when Mingyu’s tongue presses against his and his other hand pushes an inch under Minghao’s waistband, nails scratching against his skin. 

He pulls away with warm cheeks. “Maybe not where the other guests can see.”

Mingyu pouts and Jeonghan says, “Boring!” like he’s watching a film that didn’t end the way he wanted. 

Minghao throws a grape at him.

  
  
  
  
  


Each morning Minghao wakes with Mingyu’s body pressed against his. Jeonghan has taken to sleeping in the second bed, even after they’ve had sex. He claims that it is because he’s had enough of Mingyu clinging to him every night, but the way he misses Seokmin is extremely transparent—he sits within reach of the phone every time they are in the room, and when they leave, he asks the hotel receptionist to tell him if anyone calls. 

Minghao watches it happen with fondness. 

As much as they share in each other, Jeonghan didn’t truly have someone to himself for a long, long time. Soonyoung and Mingyu fell into each other like waves, quickly and chaotically, and the years when it was only the five of them wore Jeonghan down in a quiet sort of way that hurts to think about. 

Minghao used to watch him disappear for years at a time. He would feel him die, and he would know that he was alone, and there was nothing to be done except to wait until he decided to return. 

He always did. That was never the problem. 

Jeonghan has always been loved—a thorny garden of roses tended to with gentle hands and precious attention—but there is something about the way Seokmin loves him. Something beyond the tether of their souls. Something earned. 

Jeonghan values action over ideas. For as much as he likes to talk, to spin stories and use his words to get what he wants, nothing will speak to him as loudly as a person’s body and the way that it moves. It’s what makes him such an excellent assassin, and why Seokmin, with his steady hands and his expressive eyes, will be loved as deeply and desperately as he deserves for every lifetime to come.

It is the evening before race day, and Mingyu is restless with anticipation. Jeonghan is more than happy to help him expend a bit of energy, naked and spread out on his stomach with his hands fisted in the sheets while Mingyu eagerly works him open with his mouth and fingers. Minghao lays on the sheets beside them and swallows Jeonghan’s moan when Mingyu finally pushes inside of him.

Mingyu is only just picking up a rhythm when the phone rings. 

Jeonghan tenses and turns his head to watch Minghao pick up the shiny black receiver. Mingyu slows but doesn’t stop.

“Hello?” Minghao says, in English.

“Hello, this is room service, I’m calling about your order. I’m sorry, but we cannot bake you a cake that says, “ _ Winner of the Grand Prix and also Best Dick Ever _ ”, no matter how much money you offer us.”

A cluster of butterflies takes flight in Minghao’s belly. “What a shame,” he says in Korean. Jeonghan’s eyes go wide. “It would have made a wonderful surprise.” 

Seokmin laughs like an arpeggio. “Hi Minghao.”

“Hi Seokmin-ah.” He grins at Jeonghan. “Perfect timing.”

Jeonghan hiccups around a moan. “Don’t you dare— _ fuck— _ ” Mingyu pulls him up by the hips, readjusting their position.

“Oh,” Seokmin breathes through the phone. “Are you—”

“I’m not. Mingyu, however.”

“Hi Seokminnie,” Mingyu calls happily, flushed and sweating and buried to the hilt inside Jeonghan who is still desperately trying to reach for the phone. Minghao swats at his hand like a fly.

“Why don’t you tell Mingyu what he should do?” he says, trying to keep his voice light despite how hard he is, how tight his own gut is clenching. The suggestion draws a shaky exhale from Seokmin and a whine from Mingyu. Jeonghan swears into the pillow.

“Is he on his back?” asks Seokmin. Minghao says no. “Turn him around. Don’t be gentle about it.” Jeonghan yelps as he’s manhandled into place. Mingyu pushes back into him immediately and Jeonghan arches his back, hands clinging to Mingyu’s sun kissed shoulders. Minghao describes it all in detail to Seokmin, who seems to be losing his breath more and more with every passing second. Within minutes, Mingyu’s hips begin to lose their rhythm, his mouth open and panting against Jeonghan’s collarbone. Minghao says so.

“Pass the phone to Jeonghan,” Seokmin says urgently. 

It takes a second of manoeuvring because the cord doesn’t stretch far enough, but the way Jeonghan’s expression changes when he gets the phone to his ear makes Minghao feel like he has been struck by lightning. 

“Hello, I miss you,” Jeonghan says desperately, body jolting two inches up the bed with the force of Mingyu’s thrust, “Why haven’t you called?” Seokmin says something that cracks the pleasure on Jeonghan’s face into something like joy, like love, and Jeonghan says, “Me too. Me too.” He looks at the ceiling. His eyes are shining.

“Jeonghan,” Mingyu breathes, hooking an arm behind Jeonghan’s knee and using it as leverage to push in harder. 

“I know,” Jeonghan says, fingers threading through his hair and gripping. He pulls Mingyu into a messy kiss right next to the receiver and Mingyu’s body shudders before locking tight, brows pulled together, jaw slack. Minghao feels stretched thin like glass beside them, but he waits. He waits because he knows—

“Minghao.” Jeonghan reaches for him, clumsy, urgent, and Mingyu pulls out only for Minghao to roll on top of Jeonghan’s shivering body, to press inside him in one fluid motion that makes him see stars, makes Jeonghan groan brokenly into the phone. “Yeah, he is,” he tells Seokmin. 

Minghao gets both of Jeonghan’s calves over his shoulders and fucks him like that. It feels like breathing, to be with Jeonghan this way. Having Seokmin on the phone isn’t for instruction anymore; Minghao knows Jeonghan’s body as well as he knows Junhui’s, as he does his own. Leaving bruises on Jeonghan’s hips is one of the oldest kinds of impermanence he knows. 

Jeonghan finishes first, with Seokmin’s voice in his ear and Minghao’s name coating his teeth. Minghao follows quickly after, Mingyu’s hands heavy on his back and his breath hot against his skin. 

They all collapse into a pile on the mattress. Minghao’s nose gets hit by the phone cord when Mingyu pulls at the receiver a little too enthusiastically to say hello, and Jeonghan laughs—this ugly, cackling laugh, his head thrown back, his hair a mess. 

Minghao itches for a sketchpad so much that it burns. 

  
  
  
  
  


The race passes in a blur of sound and heat. Jeonghan disappears between the twenty-third and fifty-eighth lap. Minghao raises an eyebrow at him in question when he returns, and Jeonghan simply pops another bottle of champagne.

Mingyu places fourteenth. Considering he has never participated in such a high profile race before, it’s impressive that he qualified at all. His teammate comes second and, surprising no-one, Graham Hill takes another first place for British Racing Motors. 

The three of them beg off the after-party to drive away in a silver 1965 Aston Martin convertible that makes Minghao feel a little weak at the knees. The faster they leave the city, the better. No use waiting around to see what happens once the target’s body is found. 

Mingyu drives. Jeonghan cheats at rock, paper, scissors for the passenger seat, but Minghao lets him take it anyway. He spreads out as much as he can in the backseat as they soar along the coastline towards Nice. 

Somewhere around the halfway point, Jeonghan offers to give Mingyu a blowjob. Mingyu yelps and swerves halfway into the other lane in response and Jeonghan laughs and laughs. 

Minghao watches them bicker in the front seat, hair flying in their eyes, love alive in their smiles, and his chest blooms.

It feels like they’re chasing the sun. 

* * *

_ Safe House  
_ _ Mekong Delta, Vietnam  
_ _ June, 2026 _

* * *

Vietnam at this time of year has always been difficult, a constant and oppressive wall of humidity accompanied by random outbursts of rain like a temperamental child. Minghao doesn’t enjoy the heat, but the large, single story house that sits tucked into the jungle along the slow waters of the Mekong Delta has helped them lay low from much worse in the past. 

They had to take a complicated mix of planes and boats to get here—staying off the grid is easy in theory, considering they were all born before any semblance of a global grid was even conceived, but Soonyoung still had to call in a favour he said he was saving, because nobody else wanted to sacrifice their cards for a mess he created. With the added factor of British intelligence breathing down their necks, the journey has been exhausting.

Everyone takes a collective breath of relief when they finally walk through the front door. 

It’s cooler inside thanks to the tiled floor and ceiling fans lazily rotating from the wooden beams. The furniture is outdated but in good condition; everything is wiped clean and it smells faintly of coffee. The woman who owned the house was already blind when they first found it thirty years ago—when they half dragged Jeonghan across the border and spat themselves out of the jungle in a desperate jumble of bodies, men biting at their heels like dogs. 

They stayed in this house for four months. They slept in rotations. Minghao doesn’t like to think about the ghosts they left behind. 

He doesn’t know who cleaned the apartment, and he paid good money to keep it that way; he doesn’t like killing people who can identify them but he doesn’t usually have a choice. They have to do what they must to survive beyond simply healing the wounds in their bodies. 

At least the owner of the house is dead now. The man who rowed them down the river said it with a heavy sigh. Mingyu offered his condolences; Minghao kept his eyes on the horizon.

Seokmin collapses onto the couch with an exaggerated sigh as Junhui emerges from the first bedroom with a triumphant grin. 

“My tamagotchi is still here!” he cries.

“Where did you find that?” asks Soonyoung.

“I hid it under a loose tile in the bedroom.”

Minghao rolls his eyes fondly. Junhui does this—collects things, leaves them everywhere, ashes of time capsules scattered all over the world. The last time they were in Shanghai he pulled Minghao to a random bar and refused to leave until he had found the box full of old poker chips he left there in 1982. There’s a storage unit in upstate New York that is overflowing with relics of technology. Pagers. Old phones. An  _ abacus _ . Useless, broken things that Junhui hoards like they’re made of gold. Minghao finds it strange, but he understands. 

Minghao sees history through art and memory. Fluid. Interpretive. 

Junhui sees it in the inventions humanity leaves behind. Linear. Traceable.

“Well I hope for your sake it still has battery, because you can’t use your phone to play any of those little games while we’re here,” Jeonghan says. He looks at Minghao with a wry smile. “Isn’t that right?”

Minghao nods and holds out a bag.

Like teenagers handing in contraband, everyone lines up to place their mobile phones inside. Minghao ties the bag shut and locks it in a steel safe lined with aluminium in the main bedroom. 

“I’m not telling you the combination, so don’t ask,” he says without looking up. 

Jeonghan laughs and moves into his periphery. “Ah, it was one time!” he says, crawling up the bed to lean against the headboard. “Let it go already.”

“You stole forty thousand dollars worth of diamonds from me.”

“Borrowed,” Jeonghan corrects. He pats the mattress. “Come here.”

“I should help the others—”

“Minghao.” Jeonghan’s voice drops an octave and three centuries, syllables swirling together like wine. Minghao is immune to most of Jeonghan’s tricks, but his honesty always feels like a dagger between the ribs: sharp, fleeting, leaves a scar. He learned very early on to allow and encourage Jeonghan in his moments of vulnerability, far and few between as they are. 

He lays on the bed beside him and accepts the hand in his hair with grace and a smile. Jeonghan traces the curve of his cheekbone with the backs of his knuckles and hums when Minghao leans into it, eyes drifting closed. 

“Would you like to know something interesting?” Jeonghan asks, tone light. “This is only the second time you’ve let Junhui out of your sight in three weeks.”

Minghao tenses. He could say he was surprised that Jeonghan noticed, but calling Jeonghan unobservant is about as ill-sighted as claiming the sun would be cool to the touch. 

It hasn’t been a conscious thing—shadowing Junhui so intently. It’s just that, every time he moved somewhere Minghao couldn’t see him, Minghao’s chest would pull taut, his breath going short and his mind flashing red with the memory of Junhui laying still and lifeless in his arms while gunfire rained down around them like wailing mourners. 

Junhui’s death has never haunted him so strongly before. 

“What’s different this time?” Jeonghan asks softly, sinking down onto the mattress so that their faces rest on the same pillow. He reaches up to push Minghao’s hair from his eyes and leaves his hand resting gentle on his neck, thumb rubbing back and forth. 

“I don’t know,” Minghao admits. 

“Yes, you do.”

“It makes no sense.”

Jeonghan smiles. “Most things don’t. But he is safe. With or without you by his side.”

And that’s it, isn’t it? That despite the embroidered edges of their souls, Junhui doesn’t need Minghao to survive. It is his own body that stitches itself back together. Minghao only ever sits by and watches it happen, counting under his breath and waiting for the hollow feeling in his stomach to swoop into something bright and whole once more.

They are not physically tethered together. If he lost Junhui—if he lost any of them—he would not perish alongside them, cursed as he is to come back from death in all its forms. 

But being alive is not synonymous with living. It would be a tormented existence, to be without the people he loves, and Minghao fears it more than anything. 

“I just… thought I was past doubting myself,” he says with a sad smile.

“You’re not doubting yourself,” Jeonghan says. “You’re doubting him.  _ Us _ .”

“That’s worse,” whispers Minghao.

Jeonghan’s eyes turn fierce. “Then stop it. It’s not your responsibility to carry our burdens for us, no matter how desperately you have been trying to do it for the past two hundred years.”

Minghao’s smile loosens. “I’ve been doing it for longer than that.”

Jeonghan doesn’t laugh like he is supposed to, doesn’t offer a cutting remark and pull away before he can be held in place. He looks back and forth between Minghao’s eyes with a creased brow and whispers, “Promise me you will not do anything stupid for us.”

Minghao is taken aback by his intensity. “Are you worried for me?” he asks.

Jeonghan almost says something, but instead he surges forward to kiss him, fingers like a brand on the nape of his neck. It only lasts a few seconds but it leaves Minghao feeling dazed. It always does. 

Jeonghan leaves without another word. Within moments he can be heard teasing Seokmin in the kitchen, their laughter echoing through the house, and Minghao is left clutching his ribs and catching his breath. 

  
  
  
  
  


Soonyoung steals a piece of mango and Mingyu knocks his hand away. 

“Take one more and I cut your hand off,” he says, brandishing the knife. 

Minghao watches from the other side of the counter as Soonyoung inches his fingers back towards the chopping board, eyes on the side of Mingyu’s face. Just before he can grab the fruit, Mingyu brings the blade down in a perfect arc and the tip of the knife sinks two inches into the counter, right between Soonyoung’s third and fourth fingers. 

Soonyoung grins with all his teeth and takes the mango anyway. “Mmm,” he says loudly, hopping off the counter. He kisses the juice off his thumb and then he presses his index finger to Mingyu’s mouth, which opens obediently. He still has his hand wrapped around the hilt of the knife. Soonyoung presses his middle finger past Mingyu’s lips as well, his own mouth dropping open a little when Mingyu makes eye contact and sucks.

“Wow,” Junhui says, walking in from patrol with a rifle over his shoulder. “Thought you were supposed to be making dinner.”

“They are,” says Minghao. Mingyu and Soonyoung haven’t taken their eyes off each other. Soonyoung is back on the counter with Mingyu between his legs and they’re close enough to kiss, but Soonyoung won’t let it happen, toying with Mingyu’s mouth, feeding him fruit, tracing the juice with his tongue when it drips down Mingyu’s chin.

Like clockwork, they’ve dropped back into their honeymoon phase. Their relationship is a time loop: loving, leaving, reuniting and refusing to let go. Always in that order. It’s predictable enough that they could learn from it, if they wanted to, but Minghao realised very early on that this is just how they love. 

As painful as it can be to watch, this is their forever. 

Junhui casually shoulders past the two of them now making out on the kitchen island to pour himself a glass of water. “The perimeter is clear,” he tells Minghao. “The others are just finishing up with some of the motion sensors. We’ve got a blind spot by the south east corner. Same as last time.”

Minghao nods. “Good. Thank you.”

“Oh, I know how you can thank me,” Junhui says, coy, sidling over to press himself against Minghao’s back.

“You stink,” Minghao grumbles, shoving him away. Junhui moans obscenely. He neatly dodges Minghao’s hand when he tries to hit him again, blowing a kiss before disappearing into the bathroom.

  
  
  


Dinner is had with weapons stacked upon the empty chairs and a camera feed of the gardens and the front of the house running quietly in the salon. This is the closest version of home Minghao has had in almost five years. Junhui finishes eating first and reaches under the table to coax Minghao’s right leg over his left, hands kneading into his inner thigh like a habit. Minghao sinks into the feeling and the noise of the six of them all together with a smile. 

They’re playing ‘Two truths and a lie: Celebrity hook-up edition’. Soonyoung’s favourite game.

“You did  _ not _ sleep with Shakespeare,” Seokmin says, throwing his napkin down in outrage. 

“He wasn’t even alive!” Jeonghan points out with a laugh, hand resting on Seokmin’s nape. Seokmin makes a drawn-out sound of realisation. 

“So that means…”

Soonyoung grins. “Zelda and Francis Scott.”

Junhui yells, “No way! The Fitzgerald’s?” Soonyoung looks like he’s going to argue, but Junhui holds up a hand and says, “Us too!”

The whole table turns to them with expressions of surprise. Minghao smirks and leans into Junhui’s side. “It was the twenties,” he says in English, the way they say it in the movies, and Soonyoung and Junhui high five in front of his nose.

“Wait.” Mingyu’s smile creases. “Where was that?”

Soonyoung shrugs. “Dunno. A party somewhere. Paris?”

“You told me you left. In London, you said you were going to America the very next day.” His words become strangled. “I watched you board the ship.”

Soonyoung’s brow furrows. His eyes drop to his lap. 

Jeonghan cuts in carelessly, tongue loosened by his wine. “You can’t really be holding onto that, Mingyu-yah, it was one  _ hundred _ years ago. You’ve fucked how many people since then?”

“That’s not the point,” Mingyu says through his teeth. 

Soonyoung closes his eyes. For all his noise and bravado, he is quiet when it matters; a statue made of steel; for better or for worse. This time, it pushes Mingyu to stand and storm out of the dining room, footsteps echoing down the corridor. Seokmin moves to follow, but Jeonghan holds him in place.

“Let him go. It’s nothing he hasn’t dealt with before.”

“Jeonghan…” chides Junhui. 

The sound of Soonyoung’s chair legs scraping along the floor is grating and awful. He picks up a gun and disappears outside without making eye contact. 

“They’ve been at this for almost three centuries,” cries Jeonghan. “Forgive me if I’m a little tired of playing therapist.”

“You would do well to remember that neither of them hesitated to help when the situation was reversed,” Minghao says fiercely.

Jeonghan’s grip on his wine glass looks tight enough to snap the stem. “I remember.”

“Then act like it.” Minghao stands up. “We’re going to be stuck here for a while. Together. There is no reason for us to be fighting.” He works to soften his voice. “Any of us.”

Jeonghan scoffs and looks away, but Minghao knows it is mostly for show. Seokmin meets his eyes with worry, like he wants to come with, but Minghao shakes his head and gestures towards Soonyoung’s silhouette in the garden.

He finds Mingyu in the last bedroom on the left, sitting on the edge of the mattress with his head between his hands. He looks up when Minghao walks in, an apology around his mouth.

“Were you arguing?” he asks quietly.

Minghao shakes his head. “Just Jeonghan being… well. Jeonghan.”

Mingyu laughs and Minghao steps forward to cradle his head against his breastbone. Mingyu’s hands come up to rest on his outer thighs like Minghao is some kind of gravity. He holds tight; his breathing is deep and slow. Minghao can hear the sound of dishes being collected, the tap running. He trusts that Junhui will know what to say to Jeonghan. He always does.

“Why does it still matter so much?” Mingyu asks, voice muffled in Minghao’s shirt. “I haven’t thought about these things in years.”

Minghao strokes the hair at the crown of his head before gently nudging him back, tipping Mingyu’s head to make eye contact. Mingyu looks up at him with such naked trust. It feels like staring into the sun.

“You care so much, Mingyu,” Minghao whispers. “It makes you strong.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

Minghao leans down and presses a lingering kiss between his brows before smoothing out the wrinkle there with his thumb and a smile. 

There is a gentle knock on the door. Soonyoung shifts between his feet in the doorway with Seokmin at his back, smiling encouragingly. 

Minghao takes it as his cue to leave, but Soonyoung stops him with a hand on his wrist as he passes. He draws Minghao close, their foreheads tipping together, their fingers threading loosely. “Thank you,” he whispers, a delicate breath dropped into the spaces left between them. Minghao allows it a second to settle, and then he pulls away. 

Mingyu spares him one last smile before his attention falls entirely onto Soonyoung. The look in his eyes holds histories; tragedies that even the greatest poets could not conceive of; the kind of love that brought ancient civilizations to their knees. 

Minghao closes the bedroom door behind himself with a click. 

Seokmin hugs him from behind, chin hooked over Minghao’s shoulder. “They’ll be alright,” he says.

Minghao turns in the circle of his arms. “You sound so certain,” he teases.

“Ah, well. I learned from the best.” 

* * *

_ Minghao and Seokmin  
_ _ Nantes, France  
_ _ August 1911 _

* * *

Seokmin rubs at the angle of his jaw and stares out into the plaza with a furrowed brow. They’re seated at the terrace of a popular cafe in Bouffay, chairs facing out in the Parisian style so they can people-watch while they drink their coffee. 

“I don’t know,” he says seriously. “It’s… a big decision. I’m not sure I’m ready for this kind of responsibility.” 

“I believe in you,” says Minghao.

Seokmin pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a heavy sigh. “Alright, fine.” He looks Minghao in the eyes. “I’ll have the apricot jam.”

Minghao cheers, waves down the waiter and relays their order with a smile. They’ve settled into an easy routine now that it’s just the two of them: going to cafes in the mornings, painting in the afternoons, chasing down petty criminals when they get bored after sunset. 

The rest of the group left on a train for Paris one month ago. Soonyoung was restless and Jeonghan said he didn’t care to sit around and watch Minghao make his attempts at reviving Impressionism. They started disappearing in the evenings. The dining table turned into a dumping ground for blueprints and maps and stolen paperweights. They didn’t tell Minghao their plans, but they never have to. He recognised the rhythm of reconnaissance, the weaving of networks; the fire in Mingyu’s eyes when he spilled over in excitement and talked about it at dinner; the pride in Jeonghan and Soonyoung’s smiles as they listened. 

Out of all of them, Mingyu was the farthest from a thief in his first lifetime. Born into riches and privilege, he had to be trained like a dog to turn his teeth on his own people. Soonyoung called it self-preservation. Jeonghan called it entertainment. Minghao stepped in when he needed to. 

He ended up being the one who taught Mingyu how to steal art. 

At least, in the correct way.

“It is the most honourable kind of theft,” he said as they wandered around the halls of the National Gallery in London, when the marble was still new enough to shine. “It requires class, finesse, precision. Nothing like shouldering into a man on the sidewalk to steal his watch.” He looked pointedly at the chain of the gold-plated pocket watch tucked into Mingyu’s breasted coat.

“Can you show me?” Mingyu asked eagerly.

“What do you think I’m doing?” Minghao stopped before the Arnolfini Portrait. “You’re already familiar with the first step: identify the target.”

Mingyu regarded the painting with a critical eye, hands clasped behind his back. Anyone passing by would think he was appreciating the artwork, but Minghao could see him cataloguing the weak spots, the way it was fixed to the wall, the guard standing two feet away, the distance between them and the exit. Such a quick learner. 

Minghao beamed and took a step closer to whisper over his shoulder: “Now, the second step.” 

(Mingyu failed that first attempt. So miserably, in fact, that they had to stay out of London for three decades. Junhui still sends him a postcard of the Arnolfini Portrait every time he visits the city. “To keep him humble,” he says. Mingyu complains, but he keeps every one.)

Junhui went with the others to Paris, not because he cares about stealing art, but because he likes to be where the action is. Minghao told him to bring back a souvenir and kissed him in the shadows of the platform until Soonyoung yelled at them to hurry up or he’d miss the train.

The waiter brings bread and Seokmin thanks him in fractured but earnest French. 

Minghao pats his arm with a smile because he knows Seokmin enjoys the encouragement. He’s rewarded by Seokmin grinning shyly into his coffee cup. 

The cafe is busier than usual this morning. Minghao makes it a habit to know how many bodies are in his direct vicinity, to keep half an ear in the conversation and half on those around him, and now that his attention is no longer on Seokmin he realises that everyone is talking a mile a minute, and not just those sitting at the outdoor tables—the people wandering around the plaza, the newsboy yelling from afar, voice garbled by distance. 

_ Have you heard? I can’t believe it — So bold, it’s rather exciting — Is it true? — Impossible!  _

He holds up a hand and asks the waiter for a newspaper.

“Ah, yes, it’s big news,” the waiter says, mouth twisted into a scowl. “They’re saying an Italian did it. Unbelievable!”

Minghao accepts the newspaper from him with a bow of his head and flicks it open. The headline takes up half the page in big, bold letters. 

“Oh my god,” he breathes.

Seokmin leans in to read. “Which museum did they say they were going to hit?” he asks, voice hushed. 

Minghao meets his eyes with a grin. “They didn’t.”

Seokmin leans back in his chair with a punched out laugh of shock, hand pressed to his mouth. Minghao joins in, at a loss for words. He knew Jeonghan was bold and Soonyoung was headstrong enough to accomplish almost anything, but this… 

The newspaper lies face-up between them on the table like a letter signed and spritzed with Mingyu’s cologne. 

_ “The Mona Lisa: Stolen!” _

Minghao takes it back to the cottage to frame it. 

  
  
  
  
  


“Bring your chin up and tilt your head.  _ À gauche. _ ” 

Seokmin shifts to the right. 

Minghao giggles. “ _ L’autre gauche _ .”

Seokmin frowns and moves his head to the left with exaggerated slowness, like he is asking a question with the movement. Minghao nods encouragingly and Seokmin’s shoulders relax. 

“Do I have to stay still the whole time?” he asks, watching Minghao adjust the easel with interested eyes. The sun has fallen gracefully into the studio, streaking along the floor and catching the skirting boards; Seokmin, beside the window, is lit up like a rose garden in spring. His hair falls soft over his brow and his sky-blue shirt is loose around his shoulders, open slightly at his chest. 

“You don’t have to be a statue.” Minghao nudges his stool closer to the easel, getting comfortable. “But try to hold the position, if you can. We’ll take breaks. As many as you need.”

Seokmin nods obediently. He’s still shaking so many habits; they buzz around him like bees. The formalities he uses with Minghao. The way his finger twitches on the trigger before he pulls it. The value he gives time, his blood and his breaths, as though they are still finite things. 

His humanity makes him all the more beautiful in Minghao’s eyes. Perhaps he would be concerned about Jeonghan’s desperation to burn it out of him if he couldn’t see the simmering strength behind Seokmin’s every movement, the unbridled surety of his heart. It may take a few more decades to truly shine through—Seokmin doesn’t seem wholly aware of it yet—but Minghao can feel the steadiness of his spirit, can see the potential for greatness and danger in equal measures. 

He would tell Jeonghan to be careful if he thought Jeonghan would listen to a word of his advice.

Seokmin lets Minghao get the foundational strokes down in silence, but soon his fingers begin to fidget in his lap. 

“You are allowed to speak, you know,” Minghao says with a smile, looking over at Seokmin. His cheeks pinken. Minghao makes a note to add it to the canvas.

“How long have you been doing this? Painting, I mean.”

“Many years.”

Seokmin breaks his pose to laugh. “That’s your answer to everything.” 

Minghao grins at him like they’re sharing a secret. Seokmin has warmed up to him more quickly than he expected him to, but there are still leaps and bounds to be made and every moment like this feels like a victory. 

Minghao knows that he loves a little too fiercely sometimes, that he clings too tight without realising. Junhui whispered it into his mouth while he fucked him somewhere north of Copenhagen; Soonyoung hummed his agreement, ran his hand down Minghao’s stomach and said, “He’s only known us for a decade. It’s too early for him to feel love as deeply as you.” 

Minghao could never imagine loving them any less than he does, bound together as they are, but Seokmin deserves the space to understand things on his own terms. The beginning is always the most difficult part. 

So he restrains himself, grows roots in patience and calm; keeps his longing for his paintings and his moments alone.

Years later, Seokmin will look at this canvas and go quiet in reverence before turning to Minghao with tears in his eyes. “You loved me already,” he will say, and Minghao will take his face between his hands and say, “Of course I did. Not loving you is such an impossible task.”

Now, Seokmin looks at him with hesitance not unlike a child gathering courage to speak. “Jeonghan says you make art to remember things.”

Minghao sharpens the gorgeous point of his nose, the sheer drop of his cheekbone where the light hits it. “It certainly helps,” he says. “Memory is… a difficult thing. Easy to lose but just as easy to find again, and sometimes in the strangest of places.” He pauses. “But I also just like making art.”

Seokmin grins. “Are you any good at it?” he teases, eyes cutting back to Minghao, tip of his tongue poking out between his teeth. He is so gorgeous—glowing with a youthful, boyish energy that Minghao desperately hopes will not dull with time. 

“I only paint things that I find beautiful,” he says honestly.

Seokmin’s breath visibly catches. The warm air between them hangs heavy for the briefest of moments, suspended like dust motes and springtime. 

Minghao looks away first; Seokmin clears his throat. Minghao mixes red into the white and dusts it along the canvas, over the apples of Seokmin’s cheeks. To remember.

A long stretch of amicable quiet settles between them and Minghao eases into the rhythm of painting, leaning forward and back to assess the strokes and their weight. He looks consideringly between the canvas and his subject.

“You’re frowning,” he says. 

Seokmin doesn’t hastily speak to soothe or apologise like he usually does. His eyes remain on the corner of the room where Minghao keeps a tall canvas of Junhui’s bare torso in the moonlight. It’s an imperfect thing; Minghao’s charcoal-smudge fingertips were still shaking from the feeling of Junhui inside of him just minutes before. Junhui laughed when he scrambled to find his art supplies before they had even caught their breath, but Minghao has learned the value of moments and how best to hold onto them.

He looks over his shoulder at the canvas and back at Seokmin, whose hands are wringing together in his lap.

“You have been with Junhui for a long time.” His eyes flick back to Minghao and there is something behind them that strikes like an arrow. “When did you know? That you loved him.” 

“From the moment I saw him.”

“The very first?” Seokmin asks reverently. Minghao nods. “Wow.” Seokmin’s eyes drop to his lap and his expression wilts like a garden in winter. Minghao itches to press gentle fingers under the sharp beauty of his chin, to look into his eyes and ask what is wrong, but Seokmin will withdraw into himself if he is confronted so directly. 

So he starts talking instead.

“Loving someone when neither of you can truly die is not an easy thing. Perhaps at first glance it looks perfect—being with the one you love forever, with no fear of losing them to a place where you cannot follow. But you can still lose them.” 

He flicks petals of green into the background. Seokmin is hanging onto his every word, eyes wide, body leaned forward on his stool. 

“Immortality strips us of the urgency we are taught to love with. Though if you choose to be with someone human, you must do so knowing that you will lose them. It is a brave thing, to love in the face of loss, no matter what Soonyoung or Jeonghan might tell you.” 

At the mention of Jeonghan’s name, Seokmin’s foot slips. He rights himself just in time to stay seated, but it is all the answer Minghao needed. His questions were never about Minghao and Junhui. He would tease him for it, but it feels like too fragile of a thing to be toying with. 

In their past year together he has watched Seokmin moon over Jeonghan, regarding him with such interest and reverence. Minghao can only hope that Jeonghan will be gentler with Seokmin than his past has been with him. 

Jeonghan can act all he wants and Minghao will always see through it, but Seokmin has not learned how to mask his feelings just yet. It saddens Minghao to think that he will, one day, that his eyes might lose their ability to tell stories so freely. 

The thought brings with it a strange sense of weight. He watches the dust motes dancing for a long moment before continuing. 

“Nothing is certain but for the ways in which the world will change, Seokmin. It can be overwhelming and you will go through times where you see no reason or hope for being, and love—” He takes a deep breath and looks at Seokmin. “Love, for all of its terrors, will be what keeps you going.”

“But what if I do not find it?” Seokmin whispers. “Love, I mean.”

Minghao thinks of the way Mingyu woke up early to buy Seokmin’s favourite fruit at the market every weekend. How Soonyoung makes him laugh, how Junhui offers him help before he can ever ask for it, how Jeonghan is teaching him how to tear the world apart with gentle words whispered against his ear and steadying hands at his waist. He looks at the cloudy gradients of the portrait before him and smiles.

“You will. All you need is time.”

* * *

_ Safe House  
_ _ Mekong Delta, Vietnam  
_ _ July, 2026 _

* * *

The sound of yelling pulls Minghao from sleep. Instinct has him on his feet in two seconds, right hand clutched around the hilt of the dagger he keeps beneath his pillow. They haven’t faced any trouble in the past two weeks, but that never means anything. Ten years of peace doesn’t negate one day of war. The effects are always the same. The fallout. The recovery. 

He’s halfway down the corridor that spills out into the back garden when Junhui’s laughter rises above the yelling and his body relaxes out of a fighting stance. He keeps his grip loose on the dagger as he moves into the sunshine of the morning, dawn receding into something a little warmer but no less humid than midnight.

The garden is mostly unkempt, crowded by thick plants and directionless paths, but there’s a wide patch of grass behind the porch, often empty save for Mingyu stretching out in the sun as Minghao reads with his head propped on his thigh. 

This morning, however, Junhui and Soonyoung are dancing around each other, trading blows while Jeonghan and Seokmin cheer from the sidelines. Minghao watches as Junhui crashes his elbow into Sooyoung’s nose and a waterfall of blood smears his teeth and the bare skin of his chest.

“Fuck,” Soonyoung hisses, spitting a spray of red into the grass.

“That’s three to one,” Jeonghan announces happily from his plastic chair. Seokmin gives Soonyoung a towel and mutters encouragement in his ear like a coach pushing his best man back into the ring.

Minghao settles a hand on Jeonghan’s nape. “What’s this?”

Jeonghan leans into his touch with a grin. “Soonyoungie thinks he’s the best at hand-to-hand because he knows the most techniques. Junhui volunteered to test that theory.”

Minghao’s eyes drift, as they always do, to Junhui. He’s bouncing between his feet with a toothy grin aimed in Soonyoung’s direction. There’s a smear of blood near his eye but otherwise he is clean; his bare chest gleams under the sun, his long arms are loose with energy and corded with muscle, and Minghao looks at the taper of his waist and remembers how neatly his hands fit around it two nights ago. 

Junhui catches him staring and bounds over like an excited puppy, whisking Minghao into his arms and kissing him loudly on the mouth. He always gets so riled up when he fights. Minghao tampers down the urge to sink his teeth into his bottom lip as they pull apart.

“Save it for after I win this bet,” Jeonghan snaps. He slaps Junhui like a racehorse and yells at Soonyoung to get back into the crudely-marked circle. Seokmin comes to stand next to Minghao and slings an arm around his shoulders. 

“G’morning,” he says, kissing his temple. Minghao knocks their heads together gently in response. 

“I suppose your money is on Soonyoung?”

Seokmin snorts. “No. But he thinks it is.”

Minghao giggles into the back of his hand and Seokmin’s eyes go wide. “Ah,” he says, lowering the dagger. “I heard the yelling when I woke up and I thought…”

Seokmin makes a sad noise. “Oh, sorry. We didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay. I’m just being paranoid.”

Seokmin reaches behind himself and pulls a handgun out of his jeans. Minghao raises his eyebrows, impressed. “It’s no  _ Molan, _ ” Seokmin says, referencing the beautiful white-jade hilted sword that Junhui gifted him some hundred years ago. “But that’s been staying in Paris these days.”

“You two and your stupid swords,” Jeonghan mutters. He raises his voice at the others. “Show me some Krav-maga. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

Soonyoung doesn’t even give Junhui time to settle into a fighting stance before charging at him, all measured lines and militant snaps of his hands, his knees, the soles of his feet. Minghao has watched him fight enough times to know that Soonyoung has favoured this style ever since he learned it out of boredom somewhere around 1972. It suits him—the disciplined chaos of it. The way it asks for the whole body. Relentless, powerful, lethal. 

Junhui puts up a strong fight, but he is floored in less than a minute with Soonyoung’s thighs locked around his neck and his arm pulled back far enough to risk dislocation.

“Stop,” Jeonghan calls, seconds before Junhui’s windpipe gives out. Soonyoung rolls away with a grin and Junhui starfishes in the grass, gasping for breath. “That’s three to two.”

“He’s holding back,” mutters Seokmin.

“Who?” asks Minghao, amused.

“Junhui. He does it all the time when we’re practising like this. You both do.” Minghao looks sidelong at him and he scoffs, “Oh come on, he could have dislocated both of Soonyoung’s kneecaps to get out of that chokehold and he didn’t.”

“Are you interested in seeing that happen?” Minghao asks, a little disbelieving. 

“No, of course not, I’m just—” Seokmin shrugs. “It should be a fair fight. And if not, then it should at least be a challenge.”

Minghao considers him for a moment. Then, “Alright.” He tosses the dagger into the grass and rolls up his sleeves.

Seokmin frowns. “Alright, what?” 

“You and me. Let’s go. I won’t hold back if you don’t.”

Soonyoung whistles and claps as he moves into the circle. After a beat, Seokmin follows, rolling his shoulders. They don’t do this very often. Minghao doesn’t see the point when he can practise on bodies that don’t matter to him instead. Of course, a broken rib or fractured radius is quick to heal, but it’s not exactly an experience Minghao chases after. The healing doesn’t cancel out the pain.

“Okay boys, give us a show,” calls Jeonghan. 

Seokmin’s first hit is too obvious, hindered by his desire to show off for their audience. Minghao side steps it easily and knocks his hand aside with a smirk. They trade places, reset their stances. Unlike Soonyoung or Jeonghan, Minghao doesn’t talk when he’s fighting—doesn’t care for riling up his opponents when he can just shut them up, knock them down and move along.

Seokmin goads Minghao into striking first and he keeps up with him easily, using his weight and strength to his advantage instead of being held back by it. 

Seokmin fights steadily and ruthlessly, jaw set, fists clenched, drawing power from his core and his lower body. His patterns betray the way he relies on having a knife in his hand, but Minghao is still pushed back to the edge of the circle multiple times, forced into the defensive. 

It’s strangely exhilarating, fighting Seokmin like this. Their relationship has always been characterised by its gentleness—in their words, their touches, the way Minghao gave himself up to Seokmin the first time they had sex instead of trying to take anything from him. When it was just them, and Seokmin was shaking as he buried himself to the hilt and stayed there, foreheads pressed together, eyes locked; when Minghao couldn’t take in air fast enough to compensate for the way Seokmin was snatching it from his lungs. 

Even their roughest moments together are lined with softness. A knife sheathed in silk and velvet. This is what nobody else will understand, he thinks, absorbing a hit to the stomach and rolling to sweep Seokmin’s feet out from underneath him. Nobody else will ever know how it feels to swallow the fires you created and have them burn in your body. To put blood in your lover’s mouth and to have them treat it like a gift, to give it back with a kiss. 

Minghao doesn’t love with violence. 

But it is the oldest thing he knows.

When he gets his knees on either side of Seokmin’s waist and a hand against his throat, it is equal parts victory and defeat. 

“Satisfied?” he breathes. Seokmin’s chest heaves like the ocean beneath him. His body is solid and warm and bruised. A cut above his eyebrow heals as Minghao watches, thumb pressing down just enough to feel him swallow. He presses harder when Seokmin doesn’t answer him and Seokmin’s back arches a little off the grass, brow knitting, mouth falling open. Minghao’s concentration is broken by the heat swooping in his gut and before he knows it’s happening, he’s being flipped onto his back.

Seokmin’s smiling face hovers over his, eclipsing the morning sun. 

“Now I am.”

He swoops down to kiss Minghao and the others jeer and yell from the sidelines. 

“That was a cheap move,” Minghao says when they pull apart.

Jeonghan appears over Seokmin’s shoulder with a grin. “Cheating is only wrong when it fails.”

Seokmin rolls off Minghao and pulls him up by the hand, brushing blades of grass off his t-shirt and out of his hair. “That was fun,” he says brightly.

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” Minghao says, rolling his shoulders back. “Remember this well, because we won’t be doing it again.” Seokmin laughs, kisses him on the temple and holds him close with an arm around his waist. Junhui winks at them from where he is laying on the grass, absently pulling weeds from the soil, and Minghao feels warm with it.

And then, just as easily as peace wrapped herself around their bodies, she is torn away. 

“Breach. Northern perimeter.” Mingyu sounds like he’s running, voice crackling over the radio. “They came out of the river.” 

“Fuck,” breathes Seokmin, gun aimed at the trees. Soonyoung is already out of sight, Jeonghan close on his heels, rushing to find weapons. 

“How many?” Junhui asks into the radio.

“I don’t know, but they’re armoured. Military grade. Don’t shoot—I’m coming through the gate.” 

Minghao turns to watch him come into view, heavy automatic held out to the side. He tosses the radio aside and Junhui does the same. 

“Did they see you?” Minghao asks, falling into step with him as they jog back to the house. Soonyoung passes Minghao his swords. 

“No,” says Mingyu, reloading his magazine. “But they’re moving fast.”

Soonyoung slings a rifle over his shoulder, pulls on a set of brass knuckles, and loads a classic silver pistol, spinning the cylinder once to check that it’s full before tucking it into a holster around his thigh. “Take the front,” he tells Seokmin and Jeonghan. “Everyone else with me. Try to push them back into the trees, the soil’s unstable from the rain.”

Junhui pulls on a shirt and rolls his shoulders back. “Anything else?”

Soonyoung’s grin is feral.

“Have fun.” 

They split up. The fighting surrounds them almost instantly. Men in heavy black vests, helmets and boots swarm the garden like locusts. The gunfire tears through the morning and echoes between the trees and through the house. Minghao doesn’t have time to worry about the number of men spilling through the front where Jeonghan and Seokmin are fighting; they can handle themselves. 

He takes a deep breath in, back pressed against a wide column on the porch. 

In Hoedspruit, they were on the back foot. The terrain was unfamiliar and they had no idea who or what they were up against. Minghao has spent the past fourteen days in this house, walking barefoot through this garden to find the soft spots in the earth, counting the steps between every conceivable corner of the property. He can trace the layout with his eyes closed. 

The first man steps onto the terracotta tiles and Minghao greets him blade-first, sweeping out his ankles before springing up and piercing his helmet through the visor. 

Junhui kicks off the column and uses the momentum to swing around the next man, flipping them so quickly that they’re on the floor with Junhui’s blade sticking into his chest and then across his throat before Minghao can see how it was even done.

Soonyoung shoots someone so close to Minghao’s head that he feels the air displaced by the bullet. 

He says, “You’re welcome” and then he spins around and breaks somebody’s jaw. His fist comes away shining with blood and metal. Mingyu shoots the man twice to be sure, and they move on.

Minghao lets instinct carry him out onto the grass, using a bleeding body as a shield. It absorbs five bullets before he kicks the corpse into his opponent, causing them to stumble. Minghao crosses his swords together at their neck and beheads them. He can feel someone at his back and he starts to turn around, but he’s too slow. Something snaps. 

“Shit,” he chokes. 

There’s a bullet in his spine. 

The pain is blinding. He’s crippled from the waist down; a writhing mess in the soil. Mingyu sees it happen and slides over to him, blindly shooting with an automatic in each hand to cover Minghao’s body as it heals itself. 

“I need to move you inside,” Mingyu says. 

“No—”

It’s fruitless. Mingyu yells for cover and then he’s hauling Minghao up by the armpits to get him out of the open. Minghao gags at the pain, but by the grace of whatever gods made him this way, it’s already receding—the bullet is out by the time Mingyu gets him inside, and he’s already starting to feel his feet again. 

Mingyu runs at a crouch to the other side of the sliding doors, periodically leaning around the wall to shoot before ducking back to cover. Minghao catches his breath and wills his body to be better, as if it isn’t already defying every rule of the universe already. 

Jeonghan and Seokmin sprint through the front of the house minutes later, blood coating their clothes. “We took out a truck at the front, cut their comms.” Jeonghan sees Minghao and his eyes widen. “What happened?”

“My spine.”

“Jesus,” Seokmin exhales.

“I’m okay. Go, go,” Minghao says impatiently. He can already bend his knees. Not much longer. Seokmin urges Jeonghan outside and Mingyu tosses Minghao one of his guns before following them.

Helplessness is a foreign feeling. 

Minghao has been injured in ways far worse than this. The sensation belongs to memories that he purposefully buried and burnt in gasoline because he never wanted to relive them ever again. Yet, as he listens to the sounds of fighting, a part of him believes such pain would be worth it if it meant he were out there, protecting the people he loves, instead of sitting amongst shards of glass, clutching his legs and forcing them to remember their purpose.

Whether by grace or misfortune, the violence reaches him quickly.

Two men rush through the side door. The first has his gun held in front of him. The second has his gun held to Junhui’s head. 

Minghao shoots the first man. He didn’t even bother checking the corners. The other one is a little sharper. “Drop the gun or he dies,” he threatens, voice mangled by his helmet. 

Junhui isn’t fighting against the chokehold. Most things aren’t worth a bullet to the head. 

Minghao follows the directive and stands on shaky legs, sword hanging at his side like a pendulum. Junhui exhales in what looks like relief. “Who sent you?” Minghao asks calmly.

“Get your men to stand down,  _ now. _ Or I shoot him.”

The gunfire has settled into sporadic spikes. Now that Jeonghan and Seokmin have joined Soonyoung, it will be a swift finish. 

Unfortunately it looks like the only way around is through. For Junhui, a stab wound will be quicker to heal than a bullet to the head. Less trauma. Less organs to shut down and restart. It adds up cleanly in Minghao’s mind—the strategy of it. But the action itself… 

“Right below the ribs,” Junhui says. “Go on,  _ bǎobèi _ .”

Hesitation costs too much.

The sword goes through so easily. 

The body behind Junhui crumples in shock and Junhui spins around and snaps his neck before his knees can even hit the ground. He coughs a little as his torso stitches itself back together. 

“I didn’t think you’d actually do it.” 

Minghao wipes Junhui’s blood off his blade with clinical movements. “Never ask it of me again.”

Junhui pats his stomach. His mouth does something, but Minghao cannot hear it. A tidal wave of blood is suddenly rushing between his ears, crashing against his eyes, black spots turning white, turning the world upside down. Junhui catches him when his knees buckle. 

Sound comes back like a vacuum in reverse; someone is yelling; Junhui looks outside and pales. Minghao follows his gaze and the ground feels as though it falls away for a second time.

Seokmin’s body is weightless in the grass. 

His knees are bent at a strange angle and his eyes are wide open. Minghao has felt him die before, but he hasn’t seen it happen in almost forty years, and he has never seen Jeonghan’s face work through the dead space between his lover’s heartbeats. Somehow the sight of it feels worse than the ghost of a bullet through his skull.

Jeonghan looks afraid.

He is on his knees, and his hands—the steadiest hands that Minghao has ever known—are shaking. They press down on Seokmin’s stomach, his chest, the sides of his neck. He maneuvers Seokmin’s face to meet his own, fingers slipping in blood, and his mouth moves frantically around Seokmin’s name like it will bring him back faster.

Seokmin is young. 

It doesn’t take long. 

He gasps and looks around wildly, chest rattling with the first few breaths of this lifetime, and Jeonghan chokes out a sob and holds him close. The first instinct Seokmin has after breathing is to hold Jeonghan back, fingers pressing into the jagged bones of his shoulder blades, and it makes Minghao feel entirely undone. He slides onto the grass beside them. 

Jeonghan pulls back just enough to see who it is, then he takes one hand off Seokmin’s back and links his fingers together with Minghao’s, gripping tight like a child. Seokmin turns to look at Minghao. “I’m alright,” he says. “I’m alright.” Minghao lets out a shuddering breath. 

How absurd and so terribly fitting, that Seokmin would choose to reassure them when he was the one to have died. 

He folds himself back into the waiting expanse of Junhui’s arms. Soonyoung and Mingyu crowd the others after they have had their moment to breathe; Mingyu holds Jeonghan’s head under his chin, gently tucking his hair behind his ear; Soonyoung follows the line of Seokmin’s nose with his fingertip and pulls it away with a hiss. 

“Ah! Still just as sharp.” 

He pretends to suck blood off his skin, and when Seokmin smiles, Minghao watches stars bloom in Soonyoung’s eyes and thinks he has never known any constellation as beautiful as this: the six of them, tangled and broken and held up by each other as they heal, no matter how long it takes, no matter how difficult. 

Together, or not at all. 

  
  
  
  
  


Minghao makes two phone calls. The first gets them out of the jungle. The second gets them into an executive suite in Ho Chi Minh with no record of ever walking through the doors of the hotel. 

Everybody owes him something, sooner or later. 

  
  
  
  
  


The shower feels like a thunderstorm. Minghao leans in his palms against the tiles and drops his head between his arms, sending the water in rivers around his neck and over the knobs of his spine like rocks in a stream. There isn’t any blood left to wash off his skin, but it still feels like something is sliding away under the hot water. 

They have been in worse places than this. They have needed entire days to recover from wounds and the shivering messes that were left behind. He desperately tries to remind himself that they are safe for now. There is no reason to feel as picked apart as he does—a shell scooped empty and left half buried in the sand to be battered by the waves until all of its edges are eroded. 

Except, maybe there is.

Seokmin was the one who pointed it out, years ago. Minghao had heard it many times before, but hearing it from him, when he was still so young and new to all that they were, struck like a knife. 

“You always put the others first. Every time. Don’t forget about yourself.” 

In truth, he had forgotten. It was only supposed to be for a moment, but a moment for Minghao can last months.

He shuts off the water with desperate fingers and dries his body hastily. He doesn’t bother pulling on a robe before opening the bathroom door and walking out with the steam. The room is divided into a seating area with two large beds behind a dividing wall, and Soonyoung is the only one on the couch, so he is the first to see Minghao. 

“Good evening,” he says theatrically. His eyes drop down Minghao’s naked body, but the joke leaves his eyes once they reach Minghao’s face. He rises from the couch like a tidal wave and reaches Minghao in three quick steps. He holds Minghao with warm hands cradled against his jaw, then he pushes up just so on his toes to bring their mouths together. 

Soonyoung kisses him with the gentle desperation of understanding; he knows the need for comfort after being bathed in such violence. This kind of healing is one they must do for themselves, but it can be so burdensome to do alone. 

Minghao clings to Soonyoung’s wrists to keep himself steady, but his knees still shake. “I’ve got you,” Soonyoung murmurs. He picks Minghao up with steady hands around his thighs and guides them to the couch, settling back into the cushions with Minghao folded into his lap. The cotton of his sleep clothes is warm against Minghao’s thighs, his stomach. Soonyoung pulls their mouths back together and loses a bit of his gentleness. 

Minghao has always loved this about him: how quickly his control can fracture. It is often considered a liability, but here, between their bodies, it feels like a reward. 

Minghao pulls back with a hand gripping Soonyoung’s jaw. He spits in Soonyoung’s mouth, because he likes the physicality of it. Soonyoung whines because he likes belonging to other people.

Junhui finds them like that. 

He moves behind the couch and catches Minghao under the chin with his finger and uses it to bring their gazes together. He looks searchingly between Minghao’s eyes. 

Junhui could reach inside him and lay out everything he is on the hotel room floor, if he so desired. He could open Minghao’s body like a birdcage and ask how he can live with a chest full of broken glass and bullet casings and still love the way that he does, and Minghao would simply point out all the stitches and the fingerprints left behind.

Junhui cups his cheek to kiss him, then he turns to Soonyoung and says, “Bring him to the bedroom.”

By now, they have spent so much time together that the ceremony of moving six bodies around is manageable, if not a little clumsy at times. Minghao likes the missteps as much as he likes the moments that make him feel as though he is outside of his body. It makes them real.

He ends up in the middle of one bed with Junhui between his legs and Mingyu draped along his side, sucking bruises into his neck and along his jaw. The second bed has been dragged across the floor to bring them together, and Seokmin is leaned back against the headboard with Jeonghan in his lap. Soonyoung has his forehead pressed against the nape of Jeonghan’s neck so he can watch his fingers move in and out of Jeonghan. He sees Minghao watching and adds a third. 

Jeonghan’s back arches like a bow string; Seokmin’s fingers tighten on his waist. It’s hard to tell which one of them is more desperate to be close, hands and mouths claiming every bit of skin they can reach. 

“Ready?” Junhui crawls up his body to kiss him, fingers trailing fire along the lines of his stomach, his ribs, his chest. Minghao kisses him, and then he lets Mingyu lean in to do the same, watching Junhui’s tongue press into Mingyu’s mouth to muffle the way he’s whimpering. 

“Soonyoung if you don’t—” Jeonghan’s words pinch off in a moan, his palm hitting the wall beside Seokmin’s head for balance as Soonyoung crooks his fingers.

“Hm?” Soonyoung hums. “What was that?” 

Minghao’s attention is pulled back by Junhui finally pushing inside him; surely, carefully; as familiar as time itself. Mingyu pulls Minghao’s right leg up by the back of the knee, bends it enough to stretch, to let Junhui press in deeper. His hand spasms when Minghao groans and he sinks his teeth into Minghao’s shoulder.

Junhui’s body is a taut line of control as he waits for Minghao to adjust. 

Minghao needs him closer.

“Junhui,” he pleads. He pulls on Junhui’s bicep, but it is Mingyu who acts first. He kisses Minghao on the centre of his mouth and rolls away to stand, moving to the other bed where Jeonghan is riding Seokmin into the mattress with Soonyoung’s hands guiding his hips. He pulls Soonyoung back into his body and steals his mouth. And they forget about the world for a moment. And they move so that Soonyoung is small beneath Mingyu and his legs are wrapped around his hips and his arms thread around his shoulders so tightly it’s as though he never left him and never will again.

With the bed to themselves, Junhui rearranges them onto their sides, facing the others. He hooks his forearm under Minghao’s leg to hold him open and then he pushes back inside. Minghao sighs, melting into it, rolling with the movement of Junhui’s hips, a hand on the back of his neck to keep him close. 

Junhui moves with confidence. This is a dance they mastered long before they fell into the steps of fighting with their backs pressed together and a blade in each hand. They’re not always this gentle with each other, but this moment requires it. Begs for it. 

Soon, Jeonghan’s voice starts cracking around Seokmin’s name, so Seokmin holds him by his hips and turns them over so Jeonghan is on his back with his head near Minghao’s chest. 

Minghao finds his hand among the mess of sheets and grips it tight, a mirror of their moment on the grass. Seokmin meets Minghao’s gaze and holds it. 

He feels like he can’t breathe, caught between Junhui’s body and the weight of Seokmin’s stare as he thrusts into Jeonghan, hips snapping in hard enough to push Jeonghan closer and closer to Minghao every time. Junhui matches Seokmin’s pace, takes Minghao in his hand, and the room reverberates. He can’t see Mingyu and Soonyoung properly but he can hear them—Mingyu’s voice is straining like it does when there’s a hand around his throat and Soonyoung is speaking low, fast, too close to Mingyu’s skin to make out. 

This moment is worth everything it took to get here. 

Here, in their bodies, where time bends for them like trees along the coast line. 

Here, in a world that they built for themselves, across wars, continents and generations. 

“Junhui,” Minghao sighs, “ _ Xìng gǎn _ .” He turns his face to find Junhui’s eyes already on him. Such ancient, beautiful eyes; the first and last things Minghao ever hopes to know.

“I’m here.”

Junhui kisses him into a fault line, and everything shudders apart. 

* * *

_ Minghao  
_ _ Beijing, China  
_ _ November, 2004 _

* * *

Minghao woke up two months ago feeling itchy with the idea of travelling by himself. Junhui smiled when he told him; he pulled a new passport out of the safe, made Minghao breakfast, and slid an open envelope across the table of their one-bedroom in Jakarta. 

“Beijing?” Minghao said, looking at the plane ticket and then at Junhui. “How did you know? This is dated for tomorrow.”

Junhui shrugged. “Would you believe me if I told you I had a premonition?” 

“No.”

Junhui laughed with his whole body. “It was supposed to be a surprise. You just have excellent timing. As always.”

Minghao kissed the coffee off the corners of his mouth, and then he started packing. 

It has been a peaceful time. Being apart from the others doesn’t hold the same weight as it used to, not when he can call and hear their voices whenever he wants to. Well—almost. Jeonghan said something about taking Seokmin to St. Petersburg for Christmas and he didn’t leave a phone number or an address. “You worry too much,” he had said moodily, as if he didn’t adore the attention. “We’ll call you when we get there. Seokmin will probably send a postcard. He does that now.” 

Soonyoung also enjoys dropping off the face of the earth, but Junhui says half of it is his commitment to mystery and the other half is his inability to figure out mobile technology. Jeonghan once handed him a calculator and said it was a new type of phone. Soonyoung tried to make a call three times before he realised it was a joke.

The weather this time of year is cooler than Minghao expected, but he enjoys it. He walks along the main street in Xidan, loads his arms with bags from Versace and Chanel, has them sent back to the hotel. He keeps a knee-length coat around his shoulders and a camera around his neck.

He is taking photos in Longtan Park when his phone rings. 

“Good morning,” says Mingyu. 

“Afternoon.” Minghao corrects with a smile. 

“Two questions: what are you doing, and how close are you to the museum of contemporary art?”

Minghao laughs, looking out to the lake, cold air biting at his ears. “Sounds like I’m taking a taxi to the museum. Any hint as to why?”

“They’ve recently made an acquisition that I think you’ll enjoy.”

“What is it?”

Mingyu’s smile is audible. “Call me back when you find out.” 

  
  
  
  
  


The museum is busy, for a weekday. Minghao sidesteps a group of kindergarteners all holding hands in a line to get to the new exhibition. One of them smiles as he passes. He’s missing his front teeth. Minghao ignores the way his chest clenches. 

The truest loss he has ever felt is for the things he cannot have. He considers it sometimes—fostering a child, helping them grow—but in his heart he knows that letting them go after even the shortest time would be too difficult. If not for him, then for Junhui. 

He smiles back at the little boy, and he continues walking.

The exhibition is built into a room with dark walls and floors, downlights illuminating works hung around the edges and two rows of glass cabinets lit up in the centre. Minghao stops to read the plaque by the entrance. 

_ Love and Letters from the 20th Century,  _ it says.  _ Artworks and artefacts gathered from private collections around the world to weave a story of how technology and the times have influenced the way we connect, and the way we love.  _

_ Your journey begins on the left side of the room in London, 1901, and continues in the direction of the arrows until you have returned to meet the present. _

_ Audio guides are available at the front desk.  _

Minghao smiles to himself as he begins, hands clasped behind his back. He reads a telegram from 1912. He admires a painting from 1933. 

Then he reaches 1945.

And he stops.

The letter is perfectly preserved despite its yellowing edges. The strokes of ink are a little hasty, like the author was thinking too quickly for his hand. A few of the characters are smudged. Minghao bends down to look closer, his nose inches away from the cabinet, his hands freeing themselves from behind his back to hover above the glass like a hummingbird searching for a place to rest.

_ Dear Minghao _ , it says,  _ I don’t think you realise what day it is. Understandable, considering we’ve been knee-deep in mud for months now, and you never cared much for your birthday anyway. Also understandable.  _

Minghao laughs, disbelieving. His shaking hands find a home against his mouth. 

_ As I write this, you are sitting beneath that tree you love so much. The one with the branches hanging low enough to climb. You look happy, despite everything. I hope this letter finds you at a time where you are also happy, and that you are not too far from us. The days we are all together are the only ones that seem to matter. _

_ As always, _

Minghao watches the shadow of his fingers trace the name at the bottom.

_ Junhui. _

Mingyu picks up on the first ring. Minghao doesn’t even let him say hello.

“How did you—when—” He closes his eyes and takes a steadying breath. Mingyu’s laugh is warm honey through the phone. 

“Have you read all of them?”

“There’s more?” Minghao almost drops the phone. He looks back at the cabinet to find a cluster of pages beside Junhui’s letter, and he desperately wishes he had somebody to hold onto. There is one dated two years later that simply says:  _ Happy birthday. I love you.  _ There is no name, but Minghao would recognise Jeonghan’s horrible handwriting anywhere. __

Mingyu’s letter is two pages long and the paper is so crammed full of characters that it’s almost impossible to read. Seokmin drew a portrait of Minghao in a ballpoint pen. It’s terrible, and underneath it says,  _ Perhaps I will leave the art-making to you.  _ Minghao laughs wetly. 

He reaches the last one. “Oh,” he says, punched out and hollow. 

“Soonyoung?” Mingyu asks, the name like a weight on his tongue. Minghao nods, uselessly.

The envelope is crumpled and worn. The writing has all but faded, but the heavy, red stamp across the centre is clear:  _ Returned to sender.  _ There is a US Army stamp in the top right corner. Minghao doesn’t realise he’s crying until he sees one of his tears hit the glass.

“He lost the letter,” Mingyu says quietly. “But he said you would understand.”

Minghao presses a hand to his face to stem the flow of his tears, overwhelmed. Mingyu’s acts of love are frightening in their beauty. How well he knows Minghao, to profess his love in this way: a marriage of memory and art almost sixty years in the making, to show Minghao that, even when he is alone, he is thought of. He is loved. 

An old woman sees him crying and hands him a tissue from her handbag. Minghao takes it with a grateful bow. 

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” She pats Minghao’s elbow and smiles at him, gentle as he cries. Her face is a map of a life well lived; long and full of laughter. “Some love truly lasts.” 

* * *

_ Berlin-Spandau Station  
_ _ Berlin, Germany  
_ _ January, 2028 _

* * *

Snowfall started late this winter. Minghao cranes his neck to watch it disturb the sunrise. It settles on the glass dome stretching over the train tracks before sliding down to gather in the heaps coating the roads and the trees. Junhui follows his line of sight. Every time he exhales, the air dances. He didn’t wear enough layers. Minghao told him the platform was half-outside, but he seems to enjoy ignoring practical advice.

“Which one is it?” he asks.

Minghao squints at the screen above their heads and his heart leaps. “This one.”

Junhui makes a strangled noise of excitement and moves behind Minghao to hug him around the shoulders, swaying them side to side. His good mood is infectious; Minghao can hardly stand still himself. 

They haven’t seen or heard from any of the others in a year and a half—not since they split up in an attempt to avoid a second visit from intelligence and risk facing the consequences of their defense in Vietnam. They cut all contact with the agreement that they would meet back here, on this very platform, on January the eighth at eight o’clock. The location was determined by throwing a dart at a map. Minghao chose the date and time because he liked the symmetry of it. 

A stern woman announces the impending arrival of the train and tells everybody to move behind the line. Minghao brings Junhui’s arms around his waist and Junhui tucks his chin over his shoulder to press their pink cheeks together. “Almost,” he sings, as the train comes into view. “Almost.” 

The train displaces a burst of cold air against their bodies but Minghao hardly feels it. He doesn’t know which carriage they are in, or if they are even all together. 

The hissing settles and the doors open like dominoes. Minghao cranes his neck to search the crowd. 

A family disperses with their luggage and he makes instant and electrifying eye contact with Jeonghan. His white-blond hair sticks out among the sea of winter coats and his eyes push into a smile that Minghao has never been so glad to see. And then Jeonghan grabs the body in front of him and spins it around. 

Seokmin’s smile overtakes his entire body. 

They’re not even that far from each other, but Seokmin starts running anyway. When he reaches Minghao he sweeps him into his arms and spins him around. Minghao clings to him and laughs. When he pulls back, Seokmin has tears in his eyes. 

“Oh, don’t start,” Minghao says desperately. “You’ll set me off.”

“Sorry,” Seokmin laughs wetly. “It’s just so nice to see you.” Junhui takes off his gloves to wipe his cheeks, then he bundles him into a hug.

“And me?” 

Jeonghan rolls their luggage to a stop and holds his hand out like a king waiting for his ring to be kissed. Minghao bats his hand aside and pulls him in by the shoulders. Jeonghan clings to the back of his coat. “Did we beat the others?” he whispers.

Minghao smacks a kiss to his cheek. “I missed you too.”

A resounding yell comes from behind them and Minghao spins to find Soonyoung barrelling towards them, arms pumping, hair flying. Junhui is the closest; he catches him and stumbles back with Soonyoung’s legs wrapped around his waist and laughter in his hair.

For a split second, Minghao panics. It’s more normal than not for Soonyoung to arrive at their reunions alone, but they all agreed: eight o’clock, January eighth—

“Soonyoung, we said no running! Stop leaving me with your bag!”

Mingyu appears pulling two sets of luggage and blowing his hair out of his eyes, and Seokmin and Junhui are on him in seconds. 

The sight of him resets something in Minghao. Just like that, they were never apart. He’s seen it, in movies, when people go home after something life altering, and they drive onto their street and say, “Wow, it almost feels like I never left.” Like the coming home cancels out everything that goes before. 

But Minghao feels everything. 

He sees Mingyu and he sees red geraniums in a house by the ocean. He sees Seokmin and he sees youth, spring, and a painting in pastels. He sees Soonyoung and Jeonghan and he sees the greatest kind of strength he has ever known: two people who have allowed themselves to be loved as they are, in spite of all their fears.

He sees Junhui,

and he sees himself. 

The beginning, the middle and the somewhere-in-between. A kaleidoscope relief of moments that have come together to lead him here, to this one: a quiet snowy morning, standing on a train platform, surrounded by his family. 

Minghao has never felt so permanent. 

* * *

_ Hangzhou, China  
_ _ Summer Solstice, 1028 _

* * *

The first time Minghao dies, he wakes up beside a boy. 

They’re both covered in their own blood and confusion, and Minghao is so afraid he thinks he might burst into flame and join the ashes around them. But looking at this boy makes him feel… something. Safe. Present. 

The boy’s eyes—his beautiful eyes—scrunch up into a smile. 

“Hello,” he says.

Minghao is unstuck.  “Hello,” he replies.

And they begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every thank you in the world goes to Maya. We didn't even know each other before we started writing this, and now, two months later, I have written one of my best works and I've earned a beautiful, talented and wonderful friend. This story would never have left the ground without you. This is one of the most treasured things I've made. Thank you.
> 
> To everyone who read this, thank you as well. Writing stories is nothing if i can't share them with others. This year is an absolute carnival ride, and not the fun kind, and being in this space has made me so happy. Getting to yell about ideas and other people's writing and my own is such a joy and everyday!! I am grateful for it!!!!!
> 
> Thank you, I love you, and I love Xu Minghao and all that he has given me.
> 
>   
> \---  
> 
> 
> Would You Like To See An Appendix? Not The Human Kind!
> 
> \- [The train platform in Berlin](https://www.sbp.de/en/project/railway-station-fernbahnhof-berlin-spandau/)  
> \- [Google Maps location of the warehouse shootout near the Air Base/Blyde River Canyon in South Africa. They retrieved Soonyoung on the flat road before the Canyon.](https://goo.gl/maps/FK8BuFucgZmy1gRT9)  
> \- [A map of Masan, Korea from 1946; Soonyoung's apartment is in Hamamachi, behind the Fish Market.](http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/korea_city_plans/txu-oclc-6618419.jpg)  
> \- [The museum courtyard in Prague](https://czechbyjane.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DSC01084-1140x759.jpg)  
> \- [ A house from the street in Shanghai where Minghao and Junhui lived in the 1920s/30s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_Residence_of_Sun_Yat-Sen_\(Shanghai\)#/media/File:Shanghai_Zhongshan_Guju.JPG)  
> \- [The 1937 Shanghai map I stared at for an hour deciding where they would live](https://www.goodfreephotos.com/albums/china/shanghai/map-of-shanghai-in-the-1930-in-china.jpg)  
> \- [The street in Cádiz where Mingyu built their house](https://www.msccruises.ca/-/media/global-contents/destinations/ports/spain/cadiz/cruise-to-cadiz-spain.jpg?bc=transparent&as=1&dmc=0&mh=537&mw=806&thn=0&mediamode=desktop&hash=D9B7B73B8E46C5CA89F8E5D875EF6034B4D34DF2)  
> \- [A general idea of the Safe House](https://hellovietnam24h.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/A-homestay-in-Mekong-Delta-is-distinctive-with-all-made-of-coconut-wood-2.jpg)  
> \- [The 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa](https://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138800110/the-theft-that-made-the-mona-lisa-a-masterpiece)  
> \- [Graham Hill Wins Monaco Grand Prix In B.R.M. (1965)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bupXjK4CXWU)
> 
> \---
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/dygonilly)   
>  [maya's twitter](https://twitter.com/lithomancy)


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